


What Goes After the Fall

by SuperLizard



Category: Cursed (TV 2020), Cursed - Thomas Wheeler
Genre: Adoption, Alcohol, Anxiety, Body Horror, Confessions, Death Wish, Fey hospitality, Grief/Mourning, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Injury, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Madness, Magic, No Healing Cock, Oral Sex, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Royalty, Sex Toys, Suicidal Thoughts, Tentacles, Trauma, Under-negotiated Kink, Walking, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 34,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperLizard/pseuds/SuperLizard
Summary: Pride and wrath can only carry our heroes so far. The fires that burn brightest are those that they light for each other.The Shadow Lords bring what is left of the Fey Queen and the Green Knight back to the Fey encampment.
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight & Squirrel | Percival (Cursed), Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed), Kaze & The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed), Nimue & Pym (Cursed)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 54





	1. Ties that bind

The Gawain that the Shadow Lords-- Nimue among them-- deposited at the command tent was and wasn't the Gawain they remembered. He looked mostly the same, but this Gawain had deep green marks peaking out of the neck of his tunic, rolling down along his arms and wrapping around his fingers, as if holding him together. His posture was hunched, his eyes rarely left the ground. And when he did look up-- when he was directly spoken to-- they could see the formerly hazel and blue-grey complexity was replaced with the same deep green, as if whatever was holding him together on the outside was doing the same on the inside.

So when the conversation made it past greetings and commiserations and arrived at information, his reaction to the news that the Weeping Monk had brought Squirrel back to camp and thrown himself at their mercy didn't surprise anyone. He visibly flinched, grimaced, and his hand drifted up to press against his side, the green behind his eyes writhing as the Hidden tried to prevent the wounds in his mind from worsening.

Nimue put a hand on his back, her face sad and tired. Faint green appeared at the edges of her hairline, but it was difficult to see in the shadows of the lamp-lit tent.

"I need some time," he said when he was able. "I need to heal before I can help him. I am sorry to pass this burden to all of you." But then his face twisted into a pained smile. "Percival, is he well? Did they..."

"He is in good health," Arthur reported immediately. "They did not harm him."

Gawain nodded, hand still grasping his side absently.

"Are _you_ well?" Arthur asked.

Kaze shot him a side-eye. "Obviously not. You should rest."

He nodded obediently.

She snorted, and tried for a smile. "The Green Knight agreeing to rest? Now I _know_ you aren't well."

He simply nodded again.

"I was unable to heal him conpletely," Nimue explained quietly. "The Hidden have healed the very worst and are holding him together, but now he is healing under his own power."

Kaze swore under her breath and crossed the tent to take his arm under hers. "Your own tent was not pitched when we moved, but we still have it and all of your belongings. I will order it set up. Tonight you will sleep in my bed."

"How are you still upright?" Arthur wondered.

He grimaced. "Too stubborn."

Kaze led him away, speaking quietly so only he could hear. The camp was mostly dark in the autumn evening, lit by flickering torches set here and there. Hardly any recognized them, and those that did-- while visibly surprised and overjoyed-- were respectful enough to keep their distance. Even so, whispers broke out around them and spread quickly.

By the time they reached Kaze's tent at their limited pace, a familiar figure waited, sniffling but still standing bravely to see if the rumors were true. 

"Sir Percival," Gawain greeted him, voice breaking.

The boy rushed forward and flung his arms around the knight's waist, and wiped his tears on his shirt. "I thought they killed you I didn't mean to leave you behind I am so sorry--"

"Shh, there now." He knelt to hug him properly and ignored the way his entire body protested the action. "I thought they would have you next. I am so pleased that you're alive. You have no reason to apologize to me."

"I left you there," he sobbed.

"Ssh, no! No, you were one of two that didn't, and neither you nor Nimue could have saved me. Only by the Hidden am I alive." He kissed the top of the boy's head and patted his back as he cried. "My brave boy."

They held together like this until Squirrel had cried his eyes dry, then a few moments more.

Gawain released him and held him at arm's length. "I know you have much to tell me about your daring escape."

"Lance--"

He held up a finger. "Tell me in the morning. I am very tired, as you might imagine, there is time enough to wait."

Squirrel sniffed and nodded. "I will see you at breakfast."

He chuckled and stood up. "If you can wait that long." As he slowly straightened against the green pulling at his wounds, his gaze crossed the torchlight to a tall figure standing, crestfallen and silent, just inside its flickering circle.

The insistent bindings in his side and in his head twisted harder and he gasped from the sudden intensity of it. The world tilted violently.

Somewhere to his side, Kaze was shouting angrily. Her words seemed distant and insignificant. The world dimmed around the edges. The Weeping Monk, uncloaked and unarmed, pale and pleading before him, was the only thing that remained sharp.

"I'm sorry," Gawain told him sincerely, reaching out his hand. One of them approached the other, but he didn't feel his own legs move, nor see the monk take a single step. His outstretched hand landed on a solid shoulder. A hand closed around his elbow. "I can't help you now. I haven't the strength." 

"You already freed me," a familiar voice assured him as the tunnel narrowed to the smallest and most distant ray of light. "Rest."

Then the world went dark.


	2. Look on't again what I have done

Nimue scratched at her shoulder absently, not quite used to the way the scars and the puckered skin around them felt against the linen dress. For all that she had failed to heal the dying Gawain, once Merlin and Morgana had hauled her from the river and helped remove the arrows, healing herself had been almost too simple. The wounds had closed over, but sometimes the wounds still ached. 

_Hate,_ Merlin had explained that lingering pain. _Hate is a powerful motivator for magic, but it is antithesis to healing in every way. It lives on in its own handiwork._

It certainly explained why she could flay a man with vines, but not heal him from the same. She had hated. She even hated how full of hate she sometimes felt, before the underworld, before the river, before even leaving Dewdenn. She hated herself, too.

Was hate hereditary? She had asked Merlin, but he said he didn't know.

Her father was a hundreds of years old druid, but there seemed to be a lot he didn't know. It made her afraid for the future of her people, for her friends. If he of all people didn't know these things, that meant _all_ of them were making it up as they went along, not just her. Faking it. They had two kings and a church trying to wipe them from the land, and they were all faking it.

She paced around the camp, trying to be seen by as many as possible, to reassure them of her continued life and give them hope. Those that had the energy, curtseyed or bowed to her as they passed. Those that didn't, greeted her quietly and wished her well.

Her second intention was to find someone in particular. She followed her nose to the healers' tent circle, and poked her head in three tents before her friend scurried out of another tent, arms around a huge basket full of dried plants. When she saw Nimue, she practically threw the basket on the ground and dashed over, wrapping her in a tight hug.

Too tight for a hug. Nimue patted her shoulder to get her to let up a bit, but she didn't. Instead, she inhaled in preparation for a mighty giving-out.

"DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN OR I WILL PERSONALLY FOLLOW YOU TO YOUR FATE AND KICK YOUR ASS."

Nimue blushed hard. "Sorry."

Pym let her go and took half a step back, hands on her hips. "Don't you 'sorry' me! I was so worried!"

"Oh, Pym," she smiled.

"If you ever think of ransoming yourself for anyone ever again, you had better ASK first if any of us even WANTED to be ransomed." She tried to glare, but she was already smiling too hard, so the glare dissolved into tears.

When they'd both had a good hug and a good cry, Pym looped her arm through her friend's and lead her away.

"Should we--" Nimue gestured at the abandoned basket of herbs.

"Nah, someone else will get it. My best friend is back from the dead. We need wine and some peace and quiet. You would not believe what you've missed."

\--

There hadn't actually been that much she'd missed, but Nimue wasn't about to abandon the privilege of escaping for a few hours with her friend. The only matter of weight their conversation contained was what had happened to Nimue.

"Morgana says she was able to feel where I was, because I was close to death. Merlin pulled me out of the river and revived me, somehow. He's cagey about the details."

Pym snorted.

"I know. Then I reached out to the Hidden and it was ... Just strange."

She waited patiently for her friend to process her thoughts.

"It's like they were already there, like they already knew what I was going to ask. Unlike the other times."

Pym tried her best not to take it personally or think of Dof, but it was difficult. Instead she tried to be encouraging. "So you are getting more powerful."

"I didn't... I _don't_ have the sword. There's no reason I should be more powerful now than I was before." She rubbed her fingertips against her forehead as if trying to dislodge a stuck thought. "They took me underground, to the Leper King. We stayed for awhile. Time moved differently there. It moved _wrongly_ there."

"It's only been a week," she reasoned.

"I know! But for me, it's been a month. I begged Merlin and Morgana to help me find Gawain and put him to rest properly, but Morgana said she hadn't taken his soul to the Hidden. The Leper King recovered Gawain from the burial mound somehow. He was all... Covered in vines and leaves, like some kind of statue from a grotesque garden. I thought the Leper King was going to keep him as a decoration, but Merlin convinced him that he was more valuable alive."

Pym sat forward and frowned. "Nimue wait. Burial mound? What happened to Gawain?"

She felt for a moment like air had vanished from her lungs. She gritted her teeth against the nausea from the sudden, vivid memory of the smell of burned flesh and bone marrow.

Her best friend in all the world and trusty companion in adventures aplenty leaned forward and patted her arm gently, then refilled her wine glass, because that's what best friends do.

Nimue pulled herself together and tossed back half the glass. "It was bad," she managed. "I tried to bargain for him and Squirrel, but Squirrel had already escaped on his own. They brought what was left of him to my tent. There were pieces of him missing and half of his chest was just crushed, I couldn't tell if he was breathing. And when I asked the Hidden to heal him, I felt their disgust. They refused. So I asked them to accept his soul, and to take his body into the ground where the humans couldn't defile him anymore."

Some anger that had already cooled into grief stirred inside Pym's heart. It hadn't just been Dof, it hadn't been her friend holding back, it was indeed the Hidden who decided on a whim who to heal and who to let die. Maybe it had been Dof's time after all. Maybe it had been Gawain's. But then-- "The rumors are that you brought Gawain with you back to camp."

Nimue squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. "I've-- we've-- Merlin and I, and Morgana, we've done something terrible. It was his time to die. We brought him back from the Twilight and to incredible pain. All because I couldn't just listen to what the Hidden were telling me, I was too proud and too angry. The whispering of that damn sword in my mind told me I didn't have to lose anyone else ever again."

Pym held her hand, feeling the scars on her palm. "You used that stupid thing again, didn't you?"

She nodded. "I used it to force the Hidden to listen to me. They were... Are... Angry with me. They did the smallest thing possible to fulfill my wish. I will never touch the sword again, and I will never again ask them anything the way I asked them for this."

She squeezed her hand comfortingly. "You have time now to make things right with them. They are forgiving in their own way."

Nimue smiled sadly. "I might earn their forgiveness, but I can never make this right." She sniffed, dragged a sleeve across her nose, drank the rest of the wine in a single go. "I gave the sword to Morgana."

"You did what? Why?"

"She's death's widow now, she's the most powerful sorceress I know. And she's not stupid enough to use it, like I am. Or sky forbid, Merlin." 

"She's unpredictable."

She sighed. "Morgana promised to keep the sword out of play for as long as possible, or until we present her with a good enough plan for who should carry it next. It's far too dangerous to use, even for those who understand what it is. Maybe especially us."

Pym took all of this in. "You know something?"

"Hm?"

"I don't have a single thing to tell you that could top all that."

Nimue guffawed.


	3. Taking less than you need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: body horror

The week after a thorough beating was the worst, but Lancelot had come to know pain as well as he knew hunger or loneliness or the need to relieve himself or really anything else his body could do. There were no surprises left in a life dedicated to the mortification of the flesh. 

But now his wounds were healing, which made them itch. Of course, scratching would make them heal slower, so he dedicated his focus and effort to, instead of causing himself pain, _not scratching._

It was a comfortably familiar hell, compared to the chaos and uncertainty of what was happening outside of him. He was confined to a tent set aside for the purpose and with an assigned guard, until they could figure out what to do about the ethical and legal problems he presented. Apparently by willingly surrendering directly to the Fey Guard, he had made himself a prisoner of war, which meant he could be held for ransom, traded for other prisoners, or maintained like a pet until his death, as was seen fit-- but until his status as prisoner of war was resolved, he could not be tried and executed as a war criminal.

It wasn't what he had intended, but he was willing to take what he could get. So for a week, they fed and watered him, helped him change his bandages, even treated his fever. And they let him be, perhaps hoping he would just die on his own. 

Lancelot didn't know if they were really the worst jailers in the history of jail, or if they were hoping he'd run away and get eaten by a bear or something, but his guard never noticed when he slipped out of the tent at night and took a walk. And in some weird twist of fate, _no one seemed to recognize him._ He supposed not too many had lived after seeing his face, but this seemed a bit unbelievable. Did he really look so different without a cloak and sword?

He'd even managed one night to join a campfire where a particularly drunk group of Fey were telling tales and talking shit. He'd had a couple of rounds with them and heard their stories and offered some opinions on their believability before politely ending the night and promising to tell a story the next time. 

Then he snuck back into his tent and promptly had a panic attack that had left him awake and shaking until daybreak. These weren't demons at all. They weren't evil, or dissembling, or vicious, or uncivilized. They were just... people. The entire camp was made up of people doing things people did. Ate, talked, slept, argued, washed, worked, joked, loved their families, took care of each other.

 _All Fey are brothers,_ the memory mocked him, and he hyperventilated until he blacked out.

He snuck out every night, though he probably should have rested and healed. He was so desperate to understand more about the people he had lost-- the people he had hunted-- that the dizziness and fatigue wouldn't keep him down. Lancelot was desperate to kill the Weeping Monk. He wanted to shed that life like a skin. He'd skin himself to achieve it, if he had to. And with every pleasant conversation he had, every natural-feeling interaction, every hand he shook and name he learned, there grew a strange, warm feeling in the center of him, a hope that maybe he _could_ leave it behind. Maybe he could be forgiven. Tolerated. Accepted.

He slept during the day, which pleased the healer who came to check on him. He tried to talk to her, to _Polly,_ but she was terse with him. He tried to talk to his guards, but they thought it was probably a trick. The double life was almost as dizzying as the head injury.

All of these realizations and hopes built up in his mind like water behind a dam, and that dam was his last doubt. The forgiveness that had ransomed his soul was given by someone dying, delirious. Could it have been real, if the giver had nothing to lose-- nothing to fear? Would he be serving the ghost of Gawain for the rest of his life?

The sun came up on Lancelot's world when the whispers that Gawain was alive reached his tent. That he was in the camp. He snuck out at nightfall and found Percival first, followed him to Kaze's tent. He knew he would be seen-- and recognized-- and punished for disobeying-- but it didn't matter. He had to know.

"I'm sorry," Gawain said, at the very limit of his strength and consciousness. "I can't help you now. I haven't the strength." Because even after dying, even after being resurrected, he was still worried for _him_. 

It was so confusing and unbelievable that Lancelot almost laughed. He caught the knight as he fell. The weight of him in his arms seemed like a part of himself; it didn't pull at his wounds or aggravate any aches. Gawain had caught him in his own free-falling realization that those who claimed to love him were lying, using him to commit atrocities. Now he would be _damned_ if he missed the chance to catch him in return.

Something caught fire in his heart, and against all odds, it surprised him.

\--

Polly checked over the magical bindings as best she could. There was little to be done but wait and force Gawain to rest. She left him in Kaze's care for the night, which turned out to be wise but not enough. She visited again after Kaze sent Squirrel to wake her. When she arrived, Kaze was seated at the head of the bed, running her fingertips over his scalp soothingly.

The low light and the dark circles of exhaustion made it seem like there were just vacant holes where his eyes should be. He lay, pale and shaking, with his head on Kaze's lap. It seemed deeply out of character for them both, which unsettled Polly even more than the late wake-up call had.

He didn't move, and she couldn't tell if he was able to see her, so she announced herself gently. "Hello. Is he...?"

Kaze nodded. "The night terrors keep him awake. And... And the magic."

Polly went to the bedside, moving slowly and predictably. She set down the bag of supplies she'd brought along. "Are you able to speak?"

Gawain's voice came out as an unintelligible rasping sound. He winced and cleared his throat. "...Yes."

"Can you describe what you're feeling?"

He laughed humorlessly. "I can feel them moving."

"Feel what moving?"

"These... Marks, bindings, vines... whatever they are. They're inside me. I can feel them moving. Here, give me your hand."

She lent it hesitantly, allowed him to press her palm to his side, over his ribcage. As he breathed, he felt something other than his ribs sliding under his skin, pushing outward to make room for his lungs, releasing pressure slowly when he exhaled. 

She startled, but he held on to her wrist, moved it to the stab wound under his ribs. The binding on the surface of his flesh had _roots,_ extended into his body, and twisted and tugged of its own accord, to where it emerged from his back too close to the spine.

She pulled away insistently, but made sure to gently squeeze his arm, to reassure him that he wasn't the focus of her fear. "That's... That is very strange. Has it been like this since you were..."

"Resurrected?" he rasped frankly. "In the beginning. It took some time for it to settle. Perhaps traveling here was too much." He clenched his jaw closed as something visibly shifted in his chest. 

"I can drug you, but that's all," she offered. "I can't make it stop. I will bring the druid, or Nimue, as you prefer?"

He shook his head patiently. "They cannot help. They tried before. They don't even know what it is." He paused to concentrate on breathing for a moment, then gave her a crooked smile. "...being drugged sounds rather good right now."

Polly returned the smile and opened her bag of supplies. "Sit up, if you can." 

Gawain pushed himself up, but didn't shrug off Kaze's help. He took with trembling hands the amber glass bottle he was offered, and uncorked it eagerly. 

"Drink the entire thing," she advised. "I don't want you awake again until that stops."

"Mm," he agreed, and followed her instructions. He didn't even make a face at the flavor.

She took the bottle back and let Kaze guide him to lay down again. "Don't try to get up and walk for the next day, at least. If you need to relieve yourself, we will find a bucket. You won't make it to the door on your own feet."

"Promises, promises," he grumbled. He coughed once, adjusted his face against Kaze's leg, and then was still.

Kaze released a sigh of relief. "Thank the Hidden for you, Auntie. I thought we were under attack when he started screaming."

Polly set another amber bottle on the table. "It might have been a kindness, if the Hidden had left him in his grave."

The seneschal shook her head sadly. "Our Queen would not have been able to cope without him. So here he is. Let us hope that _this_ is temporary."

She shrugged. "Maybe it is, and they will disappear as he heals. Maybe it isn't, and I need to make more anesthetic. We will see."

\---

When Gawain awoke next, Kaze was gone and the sun was already growing dim. His throat felt like it had been sliced open lengthwise, but gratefully he noted none of the vines had tried to address the problem. He had a shakey understanding of where his body was, how his limbs were arranged-- indeed, if any of them were even still attached. He distantly felt the presence of the magic bindings, but he only distantly felt anything else so it didn't seem so troubling.

 _Still drugged then,_ he decided. He turned his head to the side to look around, and noted with chagrin that yes, there was indeed the promised bucket, but unfortunately he was not alone in the tent to use it.

Squirrel sat on a crate near to the door, playing with a small knife and a piece of wood.

"What are you whittling?" Gawain asked, voice slightly better than it had been... before. However long it had been since Polly had willingly provided him with a bottle of what had to be horse tranquilizer.

Squirrel looked up, then put what he was doing aside and jumped down from the crate, ran a few steps forward, then stopped suddenly and thought the better of it. "You're awake, Green Knight, sir--"

Gawain smiled at him fondly. At least he hoped it looked fond; he couldn't feel his face to know. Making expressions was difficult without sensory feedback. "Son, come here."

Squirrel ran forward again and buried his face in the crook of his shoulder. "I thought you were never going to wake up," he whined, and the tears began. "I thought you were going to die again!"

"Oh my boy." He rolled onto his side and tried to get his arm to obey, but everything was very disobedient. He ended up sort of patting him into he shoulder. "Help me out, I am trying to hug you."

He somehow managed to giggle and cry at the same time, and shoved his way onto the bed to lie on his chest.

"Not dead, just, Polly gave me some sort of tincture that made me sleep." He sighed. "I might still be asleep, partly."

"Lancelot said to tell him when you awoke but I won't," he declared. "I get to talk to you first."

Gawain chuckled and put a hand on his back. "Of course, of course. Who is Lancelot?"

"It makes sense you don't know his name," Squirrel decided. "He didn't know yours either until I told him. Which is strange."

"Hm?" he managed intelligently.

"He used to be the Weeping Monk. But now he's Lancelot."

Gawain's already tenuous hold on reality slipped for a moment. "Oh."

"He wasn't supposed to be out of his tent without a guard, but he wanted to see you so he snuck out."

"Ah-hah."

Percival sniffled and gave him a squeeze, then sat up and looked at him for a long time. "You called me 'son.' Not like old people usually do, but like you meant it."

"Yes, I did."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Mean it?" He frowned very seriously.

Gawain lashed as many braincells together as he could muster from the slowly increasing pool of functional ones, and made a decision he was probably going to regret later-- which was becoming routine in matters of this boy. "Yes, I mean it. If you will let me, I would like to be your father."

Percival dove back in for another hug with a thump that Gawain regretted immediately. He was definitely crying again but put on a brave voice anyway. "I will let you be my papa, since you asked nicely. Just don't die anymore."

He sighed. "None of us can promise that. But I can promise to take care of you until that time comes."

"I'm very self-reliant, papa, sir," he promised.

"Ha. I have no doubt."

"I will always listen to what you say."

"I have _some_ doubts," he set his chin against the tiny head still buried against his neck. "But you do your best, and that will be enough."

After a moment, he quietly added, "I love you best of anyone, even more than Nimue."

"You have terrible judgement," he snarked. "And I love you too. Son."

Percival cried more than Gawain's heart told him a child should have to cry.


	4. Where the ego disappears

Almost as soon as the tincture wore off, Gawain was back on his feet and slowly making an inspection of the camp. He told Kaze he was going to his tent to settle in, but it was a lie. And of course she knew it was a lie, and of course she let him get away with it because the alternative was trying him to his own bed, which he would just find a way to escape and probably strain himself worse in the finding.

Just like of course she knew Lancelot was wandering around the camp every night, and Squirrel was stealing things, and Nimue was drinking, and Arthur was pining after the Red Spear, and Merlin was doing strange things with alarmingly specific bits of dead animals. A seneschal had to know everything about the kingdom and the compliment of knights, captains, and very important strays. Someone had to run things, after all.

But that didn't mean she was going to waste a lot of energy interfering with stubborn people. Not when it was so much funnier to let them learn lessons the hard way.

She tied a water skin full of vinegar to her belt with an easy-to-slip knot. This would be lesson number one, and the easiest.

Around sunset, she sat just to the left of the entrance to her tent, covered in one of Gawain's cloaks, and waited. She didn't have to wait very long before a familiar boy ran into the tent, followed by the more careful, still-limping figure of the former monk. They looked around in confusion.

Before they could spot her on their own, she cleared her throat. She enjoyed the way they both froze, then sheepishly turned to receive their punishment. 

"Sir Kaze, I can explain," Percival began unprompted.

She raised her eyebrow. "Can you? You are in conspiracy to break a prisoner of war out of confinement. And here you are looking for the Green Knight, who must be in on this plot as well. What did you have in mind for your next crime, Sir Percival?"

Lancelot's hand landed on the boy's shoulder protectively. "I asked him to show me the way. I will accept his punishment."

Squirrel made a noise of objection, but Kaze raised a hand to stop him from speaking. "Very well. Your punishment," she declared as she stood up and took off Gawain's cloak, then tossed it over Percival as if the boy were a cloak-stand, "is that you are tasked with convincing the Green Knight to rest."

Percival flailed his way out of the cloak and looked up at Lancelot. "It has been a pleasure to know you, short though our time has been, and I will bring willow branches to your pyre."

Kaze laughed.

\--

They went together to the south edge of the camp, where Gawain was overseeing the digging of a trench for the combined functions of defense and latrine. His voice was rough but strong, and he hid his limp by not pacing around unnecessarily. Kaze was both exasperated and impressed. She led her pair of delinquents to the table where the maps were spread.

Gawain watched them warily, but did not give away the game to anyone else. He extended a hand to them all. "Sirs."

Kaze shook his hand, then stood too close and gave him a flask and him a fierce smile. 

He accepted it, a little surprised. "For me? You shouldn't have."

"Thought it might help take the edge off."

He uncorked it and took an experimental sip, but choked and coughed for a moment, then scowled at her. "This isn't whiskey."

"Take your medicine, you stubborn bastard."

"Did you come here only to pester me? Why bring along Sir Percival and Lancelot? An audience?"

"More medicine," she declared, and walked away to give orders.

The three stood awkwardly for a moment. Percival elbowed Lancelot.

Lancelot cleared his throat.

Gawain arched an eyebrow.

Percival shook his head at Lancelot.

Lancelot frowned at him, then at Gawain, then shrugged a shoulder at Percival. 

Gawain crossed his arms and waited.

"Sir Papa--"

"Sir knight--"

He raised his eyebrows as they interrupted each other, then stopped to let the other speak, then gave each other embarrassed looks.

Finally, Percival declared, "This is your punishment, I will leave you to it," and scurried away.

Gawain chuckled. "This is your punishment?"

He sighed and nodded. "For sneaking away from my guard."

"I suppose this isn't the first time," he smirked.

Lancelot found the smirk infectious. "No."

"And you've decided to stay, or else you'd be in the wind by now."

The smirk fell away. "I've nowhere else to go."

Gawain's brow wrinkled, but he maintained a deceptively casual expression otherwise. "No people, no village?"

Lancelot shook his head. 

"How long?"

"About twenty-five years."

"Ah. I am sorry." He looked over at the worksite as the small crew was stowing their tools for the night, then back at Lancelot. "And what was this punishment supposed to be?"

"Convincing you to rest. The boy seems to think this task will be the death of me."

Gawain chuckled. "The night is young, it may yet be. I have a few other things to attend to. Walk with me."

Lancelot tried to object, but his quarry was already marching away with determination.

"You've made a complete round of the camp by now, learned its patterns." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," he confirmed anyway.

"You've seen our defenses, our supply, our numbers."

Something cold grasped his heart. Of course they didn't trust him. They would be fools to. The interactions he'd had in the nights had been reported. Maybe even staged. Had he met a single person he wasn't supposed to?

"Then you know how sure our situation is, and how few fighters we have," Gawain continued grimly. When he heard Lancelot's footsteps stop, he turned, and must have spotted the change in his expression because his entire demeanor changed. "What is it?"

"Was it a trick, letting me sneak out so easily?"

Gawain sighed. "Yes, and no. You probably could have gotten around any guard we put on you, even if they hadn't had orders to let you out. And you could probably lay waste to this camp in half an hour, if you really..." He trailed off for a moment, expression faltering. The green behind his eyes twisted, pulled tight against itself.

Lancelot stepped closer to him, reached out a hand carefully.

Gawain stepped back just as carefully. He shook his head, trying to dislodge something. "They... They thought it better if you could see everyone as we are. To see that we are just people." He took a deep breath and then turned and marched away again, expecting Lancelot to follow him. 

Which of course he did.

"We are _your_ people, if you will have us." He took them to the corral and pens that served as the stable. "And I hope that you will. We could use your help." Here they paused while Gawain checked the general condition of the herd and patted shoulders and shook hands with the farier and stablemaster, received their reports, and introduced Lancelot casually. 

Lancelot shook their hands as well and was as polite as possible, following after Gawain as he marched head-first for their next destination. "I will do all that I can. There is no way that I could atone for the damage I have done, but I will die trying."

Gawain stumbled, and then stopped. He turned his face away for a moment, then sighed again. "You just might." When they continued walking, he fished the flask out of his belt and took another drink. They arrived to the mess tent as the cooks were putting away supper, and turned to Lancelot. "Have you eaten?"

"Not yet."

He tilted a head towards the table where there was still bread and salt fish set out. "Camp's finest establishment. Get some food and bring it along, they will have packed everything away before we are done."

Lancelot moved to obey, but noticed Gawain not following. "What of you?"

Gawain shook his head, a hand drifting up to hover over the stab wound. "I am... Not good supper company at the moment. I will eat on my own, later."

He arched an eyebrow skeptically but didn't press the matter. Instead, he asked for an extra bread roll and hid it in his shirt pocket.

They continued next to stand outside the Fey Guard's own operations tent, where Gawain received the report from the evening watch and briefed the first night watch. As they walked away from this, the knight watched him carefully. "What do you think of all this?"

"Better disciplined than the Paladins, though not significantly," he noted wryly. "I can't help but notice you're giving me a lot of information."

Gawain barked a short laugh. "Yes. Yes, I am."

"Is any of this real?" He wondered. "Are you really so foolish as to show me everything I would need to know to destroy you, and to leave me without a guard?"

"Foolish? No. Trusting? Yes." He tilted his head to the side. "You have nowhere to go, as you say. But you have the advantage of perspective. Your insight--"

"How can you trust me like this? I could kill all of you."

It was the wrong thing to say. Gawain visibly flinched, but quickly tried to cover it. When he was again able to speak, he had one hand clamped firmly around the wound on his side. "Am I wrong?"

Lancelot heaved a frustrated sigh. "No. No, you're correct." His frown deepened. "You should rest," he said quietly.

Gawain shook his head. "There is still more to do. Lancelot, we need you. I can't..."

When he didn't speak for a long moment, he stepped forward and reached out again.

And Gawain stepped back.

Lancelot dropped his voice to a level he was certain only the two of them could hear, but let his anger boil into his tone. "We are going to your tent. You are going to eat something. Then you are going to rest."

Something subtle shifted in Gawain's posture. His gaze lifted to meet Lancelot's eyes at last, and the Ash Man was worried about what he saw there.

But not worried enough to back down. He stepped closer to Gawain again, reached out to rest a hand against his elbow.

This time, he allowed it. He studied Lancelot for a moment more, them nodded carefully, as if making up his mind in that moment. "Yes. Yes, that's wise. Follow me."

Lancelot kept his hand at Gawain's elbow, giving him the option to lean on him if he needed it. They turned some corners, politely avoided some conversations, and made it to Gawain's tent just in time.

Once they were inside and the small pavilion's flap tied hastily shut, Gawain made a controlled collapse onto a crate set at the end of the bed, and grunted in pain and annoyance.

Lancelot's frown deepened with confusion.

He began undoing his armor ties, but paused to gesture at the one chair, a trapping of relative decadence in a refugee camp. "Please, have a seat."

He trsk'd and bent instead to help free him from his armor, taking each piece and setting it aside carefully. Once it was removed, he spotted the green marks reaching up from the neck of his padded gambeson, down from the cuffs of the sleeves. "What's this?"

Gawain was already taking a deep drink from the flask, and definitely avoiding his eyes. "The Hidden won't touch the wounds. Only bind them." He offered the flask to Lancelot. "Something for your head? I haven't missed the wound you're trying to hide with your hair, by the way. Or the way you favor your side." He tentatively met his gaze, looking for something there.

All at once, Lancelot understood. The information. The praise. The care. The thin, stretched hope in his tone and his eyes. _He wants me to take over._ His eyes fell to where he was gripping his side again, leaning back against the pole of the tent wearily. _So that he can die._

Gawain watched him as he made these deductions, waiting patiently, but it was clear from the way his limbs were becoming heavy that the painkiller was taking effect.

"They won't ever let me," Lancelot answered the unasked question.

"Let me take care of that."

"Then let me take care of you," he blurted out recklessly.

Gawain's eyebrows raised, not in disbelief, but in some weird expression of hope. In that moment, he looked so tired.

"You need to eat something," he advised, plucking the flask out of his hand and replacing it with the bread roll he'd stashed in his shirt pocket. He bent before him again to pick at the laces on his gambeson.

"What about y--"

Lancelot grabbed the bread roll out of his hand and stuck it in his mouth to stop him from talking.

Gawain made an indignant noise and threaded his arms through Lancelot's own, not interrupting his work but at least removing the bread roll.

Lancelot held back a sigh of relief when the stubborn knight took a bite and started chewing. "I'll bring you some meat tomorrow. You need something more substantial to recover."

"There isn't enough--"

"Stop it," Lancelot ordered him. "Shut up." Laces undone, he put his hands on Gawain's face and forced him to look directly at him. "Listen to me now. You can't have what you clearly want outside of this tent. But while we are here-- while we are alone-- I'm in charge. And you will do as I say."

Gawain let out a breathy moan, the painkillers seeming to work first on his self-control and only then on his pain. He reached up and let his fingertips drift gently against those long-fingered hands. He was twistingly aware that those hands could end him in a moment. 

Lancelot struggled to contain the incredible force of what he was feeling. He wanted to give him everything that he needed, everything he was too proud to take for himself, and _oh, what he wanted in return._ Here was the Sky Man who he had almost taunted into surrender at the mill. The shadow in the green that had killed a hundred Paladins without ever being spotted. The guerilla tactician that had ruined the water supply, forced them into muddy swamps, watched from the trees as a bear killed a dozen of his men. The bold savior who had thrown himself in front of swords and arrows as a distraction so that his people could escape. Here he was, under his hands, finally willing to surrender.

The fact that it was _after_ dying a warrior's death, _after_ going to the grave unyielded, _after_ cutting Lancelot free of illusions and control-- these heated his body maddeningly. He wanted to tear off the last of his clothes and claim him, bite him, suck marks into his flesh. 

But he was drugged, weakened, and still injured. Though the fetching pink tinge of his cheekbones and pupils blown wide indicated that maybe Lancelot was on the correct trail.

Gawain licked his lips, breath short. 

Lancelot stuffed the bread roll in his mouth again, mostly to distract himself from what he wanted to do to those lips. "Finish that."

Gawain made a frustrated noise around the bread, but obeyed.

"Do you have water?"

He pointed at a waterskin hung on a tent pole.

Lancelot brought it down and uncorked it, set it next to him. "Drink."

Gawain arched an eyebrow, but obeyed.

When he was done, Lancelot divested him of his gambeson and hung it and the waterskin out of the way. He took a cloth and small basin and filled it partway, then gently but firmly cleaned Gawain's hands, one at a time.

"You don't have to--"

"Shut up," Lancelot reminded him, tone harshly different from the care he was taking with him physically. "You've been working all day. Your hands are filthy with dirt and horses. Magic or no, I won't have you get your wounds infected if you scratch in your sleep. It's bad enough that you strain yourself when you should be resting."

He sighed. "There's... So much that need to be done, and so few to do it. So many souls that need, and not enough to spare."

"I'm here now," Lancelot told him simply, and got a surprise armful of grateful knight in reply.

"Thank you." He squeezed him close for a moment. "Thank you, _Lancelot._ "

Lancelot paused for a moment, then returned the embrace. The practice was foreign to him, but he found he was developing a taste for physical affection. He felt warm and safe, and the animalistic part of him wanted to protect the source of affection wherever he found it, like a bear protecting territory. He distantly hoped he was wearing enough laters to prevent his erection from making the embrace awkward, but given the depth and variety of expressions he had seen Gawain wear in the last ten minutes, maybe it would be welcomed too. He wasn't sure yet.

But this wasn't the moment to find out. He helped Gawain to stand and pushed him towards the bed. "Rest."

Gawain hesitated, staring at the bed apprehensively.

"I will stay here," Lancelot found himself promising before he'd even thought it through.

He gazed at Lancelot for a moment like he was the dawn. "You are an angel."

_"Rest."_

Gawain obeyed, slipping out of his boots and at last going to bed. He watched as Lancelot dragged the chair closer to the bed and settled in, putting himself within arm's reach, to start his night watch. "This is a dream."

"It would be, if you'd ever _go to sleep."_

He closed his eyes with a gentle smile.

Lancelot breathed a sigh of relief. 

When Polly visited to check on Gawain an hour later, she found him fast asleep with his hand clutching Lancelot's, and Lancelot drozing in the chair next to the bed, long fingers wrapped around that broad hand. She put a bottle of painkiller on the side table, alongside a jar of poultice and a roll of fresh bandages, and nodded to Lancelot. 

Lancelot nodded back gratefully.

Polly left without a word, but with a small smile.


	5. The robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, and more light-hearted
> 
> Not that that's a high bar

Merlin smelled so bad on a regular day that people tended to give him a wide berth. He was also two meters tall and maintained a gangly, underworldly presence whenever he could, so those who weren't put off by the smell were generally put off by his demeanor. And if all that should fail, he was also broadly speaking a mean som of a bitch. 

So how was it that someone had swiped an entire bag of dried owl kidneys and a whole salted pigeon off his belt? 

The pigeon would be easy enough to replace, but the owl kidneys could take months, especially as he had nearly cleared the forest of aged owls to fill that bag. On top of the other issues he was up against, it seemed like an entirely unnecessary obstacle wrought by a spiteful fate. He decided to retire to the nearest supply but to have a proper scowl about it and maybe do some anti-social drinking.

Imagine his surprise when he found that not only was the supply but occupied, but that its half-sized guest was sitting on top of a covered bale of straw, loot spread before him, with his mits in *his* bag of owl kidneys.

Are you imagining that his surprise looked a lot like sullen annoyance? Good, because that's exactly correct.

Squirrel was entirely unphased by being caught. "What are these?" he asked, holding up a kidney and squinting at it.

"None of your business," Merlin snapped, and grabbed the bag out of his hands. Then, for the hell of it, he told him the truth. "Dried owl kidneys."

Squirrel made a face and dropped it.

The druid opened the bag and caught it on the first bounce off the hay bale, before it made it to the ground. "You shouldn't steal from people."

The boy snorted. "I won't be taking any ethics lessons from you, old man, sitting high and pretty with the king while my village was burned. I'll steal as I please, and you can go right to hell."

Merlin scowled at the boy and almost raised a hand to him, but thought the better of it. Instead, he sat on the hay bale and huffed. "You're right. You shouldn't listen to me."

Squirrel watched him from the side of his eye and resumed inspecting his loot. "You can learn a lot about people by the stuff they don't secure. It's easiest to steal a dagger off someone who talks too much about how they're good in a fight." He picked up a sheathed dagger and displayed it for merlin to see. "Then there's Sir Kaze. She's so tough that she drinks vinegar and so careless that she doesn't tie a proper knot. LIke she doesn't even care, she can just get more vinegar anywhere." He picked up a wine skin and uncorked it, offered it to Merlin to have a sniff. "I thought she would have something good. But no."

Merlin held up a hand in polite refusal. "Do you think perhaps she doesn't drink vinegar, and just left that where you could steal it specifically so that you would?"

Percival laughed. "Have you *met* Kaze? She definitely drinks vinegar." He sorted through a whole armful of small pouches, each with a different variety of nuts, dried berries, shiny rocks, bits of metal, copper coins, even a set of dice. "Teach me how to play dice."

"What makes you think I know how to play dice games?" 

The boy looked at him skeptically through his eyebrows.

"Wow, you are your papa's boy. Give me those." Merlin dumped the dice out of the bag and onto the bale between them. "These have six sides, so there are a few games you can play. a good one to start with is passe-dix. First we choose a banker. Let's start with me, since I know what I'm doing. You roll first." He passed the dice to Percival.

percival studied him carefully. "what happens when i roll?"

the druid grinned. "you're a smart boy. if you roll a total of les than ten, the stake goes to the banker. me."

"what's at stake?"

merlin studied his collection of loot and pointed at a pouch of hazelnuts.

percival nodded, and rolled. the dice came up three, four, and one.

merlin plucked up the pouch of hazelnuts and placed them in the center. "no matter how many people are in the circle, you get to roll until you've lost three times. then it passes to the next person."

"what happens if i roll ten or more?"

"then the banker gives you back twice the stake." he gestured for squirrel to roll again.

he did. the dice came up four, four, and five.

merlin gave him back the pouch. "check inside it. always check."

squirrel opened the pouch, which now contained twice the number of hazelnuts as it had before. "how did you--"

"i'm a druid. stop asking questions."

"fat chance of that."

"how did you get the bag from my tent? i warded the door. you should have gotten a shock-- a literal shock shock of lightning."

squirrel laughed. "wouldn't you like to know, weather boy." he put half the hazelnuts back on the bale between them and rolled again. six, one, and two. "agh."

merlin triumphantly collected the pouch of hazelnuts. "tell me how and i'll give this back."

he laughed again. "and give away my secret? i'd as soon never see those again."

the druid narrowed his eyes, but couldn't help but admire the child's energy. "fine. the next stakes are... those strawberries."

"strawberries as my favorite though," he complained.

merlin tipped his head to one side and then the other. "well, i guess you don't care to have these hazelnuts back, then."

"you play tough, old man." he threw the dice. five, five, and two. "hah!"

he smiled in spite of himself and pointed at the pouch of dried strawberries, which as promised now contained twice as many. 

squirrel happily snacked on the strawberries before suddenly frowning up at him. "if you can do this, why we have to go to the mill after the grain? we almost died. would have, if nimue hadn't shown up. but you can just double the food that's here already?"

merlin sighed. "unfortunately, magic doesn't work that way."

"well *why the hell not?*" he demanded petulantly. "papa told me there would be twice as many fighting men, and more people to fight for, if the last winter hadn't been so hard."

he closed his eyes for a moment, pinched the bridge of his nose. "it's complicated."

"i'm not busy."

"you're ten."

he shrugged. "if you really know what you're doing, you should be able to explain it to me."

"that's not--" he blew air out from his nose and counted silently to ten. "alright. time isn't a straight line. we don't move along it from the past to the present to the future at exactly the same rate all the time. sometimes time goes faster or slower."

percival sat forward, planting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. he concentrated very hard. 

"sometimes," he continued, "time stops, or even goes back in the other direction. i can't control any of that. but usually, time goes in loops. spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring again. morning, noon, sunset, midnight, morning again. birth, life, death, birth again. with me so far?"

"i think so. can you control how it cycles-- like, make it go from spring to winter?"

"no, not even that. but when this same moment passes in a different cycle, and it overlaps this one, i can reach from that cycle, and make it line up with this one in space just long enough that i can change things, or move things, or see things. so in the case of these strawberries, i reached into another cycle where you and i are sitting here and playing dice-- or maybe we're playing cards-- and i took the strawberries from there."

squirrel thought about this, then his expression fell. "so, there's a me and a you who don't have any strawberries at all?"

merlin nodded. 

"that... that's really something. so if you take the grain from another mill, then there's another us who starves?"

he nodded again.

"you said we might be playing cards instead. so there must be cycles where different things happen."

"right again. there are infinite possibilities, given enough time."

he frowned thoughtfully. "so there's a cycle where my mother didn't die, and the village is still there, and everyone is happy?"

"well, maybe not so infinite. there are no realities that i know of, where *everyone* is happy." he smiled sadly.

"but you could... you could put *me* in a cycle where my mother is alive." he watched the wizard with wide, hopeful, watery eyes.

merlin frowned again. "oh, my boy. i'm sorry. in cycles where your mother lives, so do you, and then there would be two percivals."

"we could figure it out. we could be like twins. i could change my name."

he smiled sadly at the impossible love that a child could have for his family. he thought of another little boy who had asked him something similar, to be placed in a reality where he was truly loved, and who received the same answer. "there are things you must do in this cycle, and people who would mourn your loss here. i'm sorry, percival."

his face fell, and he became uncharacteristically quiet. he pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face there for a long time.

merlin awkwardly reached out and patted him on the back. "i'm... sorry, about what happened to you. what happened to you all. i truly wish i could make the suffering stop for all those who are good of heart. but all i can do is try to make it lesser, and to make bad people suffer more."

"i understand," the boy replied, voice muffled by his knees.

after a time, he unfolded and collected all of his loot except for the two pouches they had used in the game. "mister druid, i want to give these back to the us who had them before. they don't belong to us."

merlin nodded, and it was done.

squirrel collected the appropriately-burdened pouches from the bale and tucked them in his arm with the others, and turned to go. "i'm going to give these back, too."

he smiled fondly as the child went to leave.

but then he hesitated, and turned back with a puzzled look. "why do you have a bag of owl kidneys, anyway?"

without changing his expression or breaking eye contact at all, merlin popped a kidney into his mouth, chewed loudly, and swallowed.

"agh, you are so weird!"

merlin grinned.


	6. The lack

The next day was rainy in a non-committal way. The clouds thought about perhaps turning into rain, but couldn't make up their mind, and while they were the process of thinking about it the earth's gravity dragged them downward until the water collected on the ground, but at no point did the clouds form raindrops and fall. It was miserable. 

So sleeping past the early winter's late dawn didn't seem so terrible. Lancelot let him sleep, changed his own bandages, lazed about as long as he could stand, and then boldly elected to leave the tent unaccompanied to fetch some food. Naturally, as this was his first _unexpected_ adventure into the camp, this was the first time he got into an argument.

The director of the mess was not impressed by his request for meat, nor interested in who he was taking food too, nor moved by the knowledge of grave injury, nor interested in Lancelot's subtle attempts to threaten him. In a refugee camp, there was little to lose and less to give. He couldn't give meat, because there was no meat.

So without too much dwelling or frustration, he simply moved on to the next solution. He swiped a bow and arrows and a knife, and made for the forest north of the camp.

Kaze was leaning against a tree at the edge of camp, looking bored. "I am sorry to stop you, but if you leave the camp unaccompanied, you're not a prisoner anymore."

He hesitated.

"You will lose our protection and we will be obligated to kill you on sight," she finished. "Not a disappointment for me personally, but you do seem to have won a lot of hearts."

He scowled. "How did you even know I would leave this way?"

She shrugged. "This is where the game is." She stood away from the tree and picked up a bow from where it leaned, hidden behind her. "So I guess we better go and find it."

His scowl fell away, leaving a crestfallen expression in its wake. "You... Want to hunt with me?"

She scoffed. "No. But I don't want to eat salt fish tonight and hang you tomorrow, so I _will_ hunt with you. You are the Lesser Evil today."

He wanted to ask what evil he was lesser than, but knew better than to sass when he was getting exactly what he wanted.

They turned out to be evenly matched in skill for hunting game. What Lancelot's nose could tell him, Kaze's experience in reading tracks and spotting fur and feathers could tell her. Where he was quick to give chase but slow to strike until he had a sure shot, she was patient to wait for prey to reveal itself and get comfortable, and would hazard three shots to land one.

And strangely, not once did he feel he was in competition with her, though he suspected she was measuring him in some oblique way.

In the end, they returned with a gutted deer on an improved drag, rather than the hare Lancelot had dared to hope for. It was enough meat for a long time, if they didn't share it around. And once they were back at camp, Kaze congratulated him with a respectful nod and a pat on the back. He hardly paused to accept it, though his cheeks warmed more than he would like, and he returned the praise to her; they were both needed to chase the deer from the brush and to fell it, and both for dragging it back to camp. 

And that last part was the lion's share of the work. He kept his head down for the entire journey, and it wasn't until they stopped that he lifted his head and realized where they were.

Behind the mess tent, in front of a trio of startled cooks.

Lancelot's heart sank.

"What are you waiting for," Kaze barked at the cooks. "Get this inside and get it salted."

They sprang into action, only slightly cautious as they took the prize from the two blood-streaked warriors.

Kaze studied him for a moment. "You look disappointed."

He weighed if he had enough energy to go back into the woods for a hare. If he could convince her to accompany him. He hadn't told her why he was going, so she wouldn't have known. Had no reason to expect this from him. 

"Oh," she chuckled. "You weren't out to bag a prize."

Lancelot let out a long breath, then scrubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. "Maybe you still have time to accompany me today. I could shoot a hare." He looked up, almost daring to hope. "He's only eating bread, and even then only when I don't let him weasel out of it. I'm... Concerned." Is that what he felt? Maybe concern was a good enough word.

Kaze's eyebrows adorned her noble forehead. "You were put hunting for meat for Gawain?"

He frowned. "Yes. I apologise, I should have been more clear."

"Balls of your Christ, Ash Man. Just say so next time." She marched into the tent, and a half-hearted round of objections sounded, then the sound of a bone popping out of joint and the loud thunk of a cleaver hitting a wood block. She came back out with a skinned leg of deer, which she held out to him. "Your choice of how to cook it, but I recommend quickly. The smell will draw a crowd and many supplicants, and if you let that tool of a Sky Man have his say, the whole of camp will eat before he does."

Lancelot took the leg from her. "Thank you. As fast as possible. Yes. I-- Thank you."

She grinned, and wiped her bloodied hands on her armor. "Get to it."

He turned on his heel and employed his best Murder Walk on the way back to Gawain's pavilion. He passed Percival on the way, who was utterly undeterred by his fast pace and menacing presence.

"Oh wow, is that--

"Yes," Lancelot answered. "Go get the fire started."

Percival sprinted ahead and had the flames going by the time he arrived. He held the leg in place as Lancelot rammed the skewer through it as close to the bone as possible, then helped fit it over the rack.

"Watch it," he ordered. "Don't share."

The boy nodded eagerly.

He poked his head into the pavilion.

The empty pavilion.

"God _damn it,"_ he swore.

\--

He found Gawain in the command tent, bent over a table of reports, across from Nimue. The knight had some visible marks of care about him; he was in soft layers, not wearing his armor. He was seated, rather than pacing as he had yesterday. And there was a pot of tea and a couple of mugs between them, adding a soft mint fragrance to the tent. 

Lancelot's anger and frustration drained out if him, pulled inexorably downward by the gentle weight of the scene's peace. He exhaled slowly and his shoulders fell.

"Oh good, you're here," Gawain greeted. "You should see these reports. Get familiarized with how we're doing things."

Nimue looked up in alarm, but at Gawain, not at Lancelot. "He's not-- why--"

"In case something should happen to me," he told her gently, "you need someone who can take over my role. This last time was a disaster." His gaze grew distant.

"Of course," she agreed in a tone of voice that sounded nothing like agreement. "I just... You're right. Just... Let's not talk about it in context of losing you." She reached over and took his hand. 

He gave her a gentle smile and squeezed her hand. "Then we can say, training my squire."

Nimue looked over to Lancelot, and skipped over a couple of thoughts. "Ah. Yes. Wait. Why are you covered in blood?"

"Kaze and I bagged a deer. There is venison waiting at your pavilion, if Percival can hold everyone off long enough for you to get back to it."

Gawain gave him a very odd look. "You did this for me?"

Nimue glanced between the two of them, a sly smile building on her expression. "You should go. We can continue tomorrow."

He sighed and stood slowly, back popping, and rolled his neck to one side and then the other. "We can continue after a meal. Come and share this bounty with us, and then we'll get back to work."

"You should rest," Lancelot protested.

Gawain gave him a sharp look. "I have duties to perform."

"He's right," Nimue piped up unexpectedly.

He brandished a finger at her. "Don't _you_ start. Who is your war advisor, him or me?" 

"What's the point of having a squire if you won't let him assist you," she sassed.

He pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger. "What have I done?"

She grinned. "Go eat and rest. I will finish up this roster and have everything put away for the night. And I'll have Arthur take over your inspections."

"The f-- you'll-- over my dead body!" 

"It will be, if you're not careful," she snapped. "Go!"

He grouched the entire way back to the tent, but let Lancelot rest a hand at his elbow anyway. He smiled at Percival brandishing a broom handle at a couple of Tusks thrice his size who were considering the best way to remove the boy from between them and the meat. "Oi," he barked at them. "Piss off."

They scowled, but did.

Lancelot and Percival managed between them to loose the skewer from the leg, get it onto a board, and bring it inside. Gawain had already shifted the table over to the crate and was pulling up the chair as well, so the three of them could sit.

Lancelot unleashed his meanest death glare. "Sit down," he invited, careful to keep his tone neutral. 

The knight heard what was under his tone, or perhaps he heard what he wanted to hear. He watched Lancelot carefully, glancing to Percival to indicate that his presence was significant, then back to him. 

Lancelot raised a sharp eyebrow and glanced at the chair, then back at Gawain.

Gawain pursed his lips but obeyed, sitting and letting them set the board down. He stared in complete bafflement as Lancelot sliced the meat and set it before each of them.

But that was alright, because Percival was staring at him with the same look.

"What?" Lancelot wondered, continuing anyway.

"We can cut our own food," Squirrel pointed out.

He chuckled. "You're just going to eat with your hands. That's not sanitary."

The boy pouted, planting both elbows on the table rebelliously.

Gawain grinned. "Maybe I'll even whittle some forks like the Byzantines use," he offered casually. "We can ask the weavers for some napkins. A tablecloth."

Lancelot placed the next slice of meat on his lap. "Sass me again, Green Knight, and find out where the next piece goes."

Gawain sputtered indignantly and retrieved it, placing it on the board beside his steadily increasing stack of slices. "Have it your way, then."

Lancelot smirked and continued. Percival dug in with noisy enjoyment. He finished his portion in almost as little time as it had taken Lancelot to carve it, then sat back and narrowed his eyes at Lancelot. "Are you a witch?"

Lancelot's expression stayed carefully neutral. "Excuse me?"

"Did you do magic on this? Because it was excellent." He squinted at him even harder. "Was the deer magic? Are we eating a magic deer?"

Gawain chuckled at Lancelot's lack of response. "He's buttering you up because he wants another piece."

"Have you tried the word 'please?' It is often described as the 'magic word.'" 

Squirrel stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "What, you want me to plead for it?"

Gawain sat back and crossed his arms in front of him, and prepared to be entertained.

Lancelot's mouth drew back into a very thin line. He stared levelly at Percival and did not blink.

Percival stared back, unimpressed. "I'm not afraid of you, you probably should have noticed by now."

"If I give you another piece, will you take it outside so your papa can rest?"

He nodded. "Sure, I can do that."

Lancelot pried loose a large piece of the pink venison from close to the bone and dropped it in front of the boy. "Go on."

Percival took his time collecting the meat, brushing invisible crumbs off his clothes, and left the tent at a casual, slouching walk, just to make a point.

"That's my boy," Gawain owned smugly.

"It's honestly a shock you two aren't blood relatives," Lancelot groused. He drove the knife into what was left of the deer's leg and left the table to wash his hands. "Finish your food."

Gawain obediently tried, but after a few bites he set his knife down. "It's very good. But I think that's all I can do."

"It will keep for a day. The weather is cold enough." He gestured at the bed.

"It's hardly half past seven," he objected. "The inspections--"

"Arthur will do them."

"The reports--"

"Can be had tomorrow."

"I haven't--"

"And you won't. Look, I'm growing tired of intimidating you into taking care of yourself. We've too much history and I don't..."

Gawain was listening intently. "Don't what?" he promoted when it seemed he would go no further.

"I don't like what it does to you," he finished. "I don't want to be the source of your nightmares forever."

"It's not my nightmares you're the source of," he corrected before he even thought about what he was saying.

Lancelot's eyebrows shot up before he could stop them.

Gawain didn't even bother looking embarrassed about it. "You're the answer to everything. In ways you couldn't begin to imagine. You're strong in ways that I'm weak. Capable in ways that I'm unable." He made a helpless gesture to indicate his failing body. "I meant it, what I said. You're an angel. Dark, terrible, brilliant."

He scowled. "I am not the missing piece you think I am. I am missing so many pieces of myself. Every day, I learn more about my own crimes, and they are greater and more terrible than when I believed myself to be a demon. I killed so many of my own people. _You._ I killed you. I don't deserve this trust. I haven't earned it."

"In time you will," he told him without the barest shade of doubt. "Until you have, I have your back."

He stood and paced. "It cannot be, that there is no one else to do as you want me to do."

"It is. And even if there were decent alternatives, you're the one I want."

"How can you even know that?" He exhaled sharply, turning away and fixing his gaze on the ground. He couldn't bare to look at that hopeful face anymore. "How can you know anything about me, except that I am a murderer?"

"So am I," Gawain shrugged. "And a liar sometimes. And sometimes I am cruel. For what I am, it is necessary. And you are what is necessary, too."

"I am _your_ murderer."

"Oh Ash Man-- it's your blade I want to die on, make no mistake."

Lancelot started, then turned slowly. "You're mad. You've gone mad."

Gawain shrugged again. "I came back from death. Of course I am mad."

He took two steps towards him, then a step back, horrified but attracted as if by a magnet, unable to run away but unable to stay.

"And you're just mad enough to replace me, aren't you, Lancelot?" He mused, voice low and dangerous, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that his knuckles whitened and the vines clinging to his fingers twisted and pulled. "And when the time is right, you'll help me. We'll find a place where no one will follow. No one will find my body." He gritted his teeth and bowed his head. "You know where to put a knife, to make it happen fast. I trust you."

Lancelot knelt in front of him, face full of pity. "You want to die so badly."

Gawain's face expression twisted and collapsed on itself. He reached out and grasped Lancelot's shirt, pulling him forward and resting forehead against forehead, and bit back a whine. "Gods, yes."

He carefully reached up and brushed his hands over the shaking shoulders and bent back, trying to comfort him. He didn't know how to comfort others-- didn't have any experience in the matter-- and wasn't certain Gawin had any experience being comforted. The request, though horrific on the face of it, was ultimately a very reasonable thing to ask. He was suffering, maybe forever, and nearing the end of his usefulness. He certainly wasn't able to fight anymore. And without the rationale-- without the _excuse_ \-- that suffering led to salvation, Lancelot found that he could finally understand what he wanted. "Alright. Yes."

Gawain's hands sought his arms, held on tightly. "Yes?"

"I will do it. When the time comes."

He collapsed forward and wrapped his arms around him, sobbing voicelessly into his shoulder. "Thank you," he managed with what little breath he could catch. "Thank you. Angel."

Lancelot held him, and was startled by how natural it felt. How nice it was to be touched without aggression. How startlingly safe he felt, though he knew Gawain to be capable of so much violence even when he was in his right mind. How different it was from the first time he had been this close.

When he'd driven a knife through his side and fixed his fate to moment in time. That awful wound that plagued him even after the divine had resurrected him.

He wrinkled a brow and let his hand brush down his back, lower, to the exit wound. He could feel something under the layers of clothes _shift_ on its own power.

Gawain gasped shallowly, and groaned.

Lancelot wove a hand under the hem of his shirts, pressed his fingertips to the ridges of the magical bindings. They writhed and wrapped around his fingers, exploring but not grasping. He felt something hot and damp there. 

He sat back, ignoring Gawain's apprehensive gaze. He slipped his other hand under the front of his shirts, pulling the material out of the way so he could see the wound and the bindings, curling and uncurling grotesquely as they sought what disturbed them. Fascinated, he watched them stretch and search, losing their grip on the edges of his wound and allowing dark red blood to well up where they had been.

Gawain took a ragged breath and grasped his shoulder. His eyes lost focus, falling on space somewhere behind Lancelot. 

Lancelot licked his lips, took a deep breath, and then poked his fingers into the vines. He could feel their curiosity as if they were audible questions in his mind. He tasted what they tasted of the wound: bitter hatred, like walnut hulls, and rotting anger. He didn't know how to pray to the Hidden, so he closed his eyes and hoped it was the same way he had tried to pray to God. _Hidden, who are around us, I have never heard your names. I was stolen from the ground at your feet, deprived of the knowledge of your presence, bent back to be turned against you. Give me this chance at atonement, forgive me of my ignorance, and I will hold to account those who trespass against you. But above all, I pray you heal this fey, your loyal knight, who deserves better than to continue in pain._

The light touches in his mind opened up, turned over and over, flowed into the cracks and crannies of his thoughts. Seeking something. When they found it, it unfolded in him with all the surprising inevitability of springtime. He sought a name for the feeling desperately, but came up completely at a loss. 

_You lack,_ something unfamiliar whispered. 

Unaccustomed to having his prayers answered, figuratively or literally, Lancelot physically jerked back and his eyes shot open.

Gawain was staring at him with a wild disbelief. He breathed in short, shaky gasps. He looked down to where Lancelot had a handful of green vines, tangled and flailing like the head of Medusa. 

Lancelot looked past it, at Gawain's side, closed and perfect, with a smear of blood to hint at what had been. Then he looked up at Gawain in shock. Then he fainted.

Gawain followed right after him.


	7. X-rated chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lancelot is a little more resilient than Gawain.

Lancelot came to shivering and sore from lying on the ground. He cursed quietly and released a handful of dry vines from his cramped hand, pushed himself up to sit, pushing away the blanket which had been tossed over him at some point, but which did nothing to protect him from the cold of the ground. He dragged the back of his hand across his nose and mouth, noting vaguely that he drooled a little bit and that the drool had chilled in the night air. He arched his back and popped his complaining vertebrae. What was he doing on the ground, anyway?

The tent smelled like an herb garden had been set on fire. He'd burned enough to know exactly that same smell. His memory fed him broken scenes-- magic, blood, and desperation, the scent of stress sweat and the echo of Gawain's ruined voice.

His eyes snapped open. Gawain's still form was before him, slouched to the side in the chair, pale-skinned and lips blue. He launched himself forward and checked for a pulse at his neck.

Slow and strong. Untroubled about rhythm in the way that sleep removed the stress of metronomic function from the body. He was resting-- truly, deeply resting. And someone had thrown a blanket over him as well, though with visibly more care.

Lancelot glanced back towards the door. A new bottle of painkiller and a roll of bandages sat on the table near it. Polly. He let his hand drift up to hold Gawain's cheek for a moment. "Hey. We have to move. It's too cold to stay here."

Gawain grouched his way gradually back into consciousness, blinking his eyes open and perhaps leaning a little into the touch. He watched Lancelot for a long, peaceful moment, eyes tracing the lines of his cheekbones and jaw and lips, memorizing him.

Lancelot noticed sleepily that Gawain's eyes weren't as green, that the color of his irises didn't shift and twist like they had in the past days. Now they were the green and hazel and gentle motion of the treetops in autumn. He was content to watch in return, for as long as Gawain wanted to sit there. Until they both froze to death, maybe.

"Can I-"

"Anything," Lancelot reassured him.

So he leaned slowly forward and grasped Lancelot's arms gently, and brushed his nose against his cheek gently, and _gently_ swept his lips over his freezing lips, unhurried.

Half-asleep, Lancelot wondered if they were the same person for a moment. Maybe the magic had grown them together, like two trees planted too close together, wrapping around each other until it was impossible to tell which was which anymore. And he couldn't find the energy to be worried by the thought.

"It's cold," Gawain noted, waking more.

"Mm," Lancelot agreed, not caring very much at all about it.

"We should move," he continued, shifting forward. He slipped his arms around his waist and tucked his head against his shoulder, breathing the smell of him. 

Lancelot marveled at how powerful he felt in that moment. He leaned in, laid the palms of his hands against his back encouragingly. This knight, this leader, this advisor, this _warrior_ was seeking comfort in him, an escaped dog of the church. 

And for all that his mind told him to stop encouraging this behavior, that it wasn't right, that Gawain wasn't in his right mind and that this was taking advantage of him, that men weren't supposed to touch each other this way-- for every reason his mind could whisper, his heart screamed louder to drown them all out. And his body seemed to gladly agree with his heart, pounding along sympathetically. 

He bit his lip, hard enough to draw a little blood, to have something else to focus on. To keep under control. He needed to be strong enough for the both of them. 

Gawain felt him tense, and drew back carefully, watching him. Waiting.

Lancelot knew what he was waiting for, and in the darkness and stillness of the night, in the chill of the winter, he couldn't conjure a thought for why he shouldn't give it to him. "You're a good man, aren't you. Honest. Kind. Obedient?"

His cheeks warmed in a way that was decidedly unfitting for a knight. He didn't care.

Lancelot smiled. "Show me how obedient you are. How kind you can be."

He nodded almost too eagerly. "Anything you say, angel."

"Get on your knees."

His answer was a muffled thump and Gawain slid out of the chair faster than should have been strictly possible.

Lancelot smiled wider, standing. "Good. Unlace my boots."

His hands, stiff-jointed from the cold and clumsy with sleep, stumbled over the laces of one boot, then locked up as he worked on the other. His eye brows drew together with determination, but he stopped for a moment to rub his hands together.

"Tsk," Lancelot replied. 

Gawain looked up at him with the most delicious expression of anxiety.

"Your hands are cold. You can warm them on me. Put them under my shirt."

The anxiety smoothed away into awe. He slid his hands under Lancelot's tunic and against his sides, greedy for warmth and contact and soft skin and hard muscle. He made a soft sound in his throat. 

Lancelot pressed his hands over the backs of the slowly warming grasp on his body. The only grasp on his body he had ever enjoyed. And one he had _complete_ control over. He pushed his hands lower, to the waistline of his trousers, and hummed, pleased. "Unlace my pants."

Gawain's look of awe became one of worship, and with fingers made nimble with warmth, he picked the laces loose and paused, looking back at Lancelot for permission. 

_Permission._ If Lancelot didn't like what he was doing, if he didn't like the way he was doing it, or if he just suddenly decided to do something else entirely with his night, he could simply give a command and he was absolutely certain Gawain would fall away from him in an instant. He might even enjoy being denied. The whole experience was so completely different from what he had known before, and it made his cock, newly freed from his pants, twitch and rise. "What do you want?"

Gawain blinked, confused. "What do _I_ want?"

"That's what I asked," he snapped.

He froze, then nodded once and licked his lips apprehensively. "I want... I want to kiss you."

Lancelot raised an eyebrow. So tame. "Very well. Kiss me, then."

Gawain leaned in and put his hot, wet lips around the tip of Lancelot's very interested cock, and worked his mouth around it languidly, letting his tongue caress just a little, and then drew back with a pleased sigh and an obscene wet sound. He looked up at Lancelot again, questioning.

Lancelot's cheeks were very pink. That had not been what he expected, but he found he was completely fine with the suggestion. He wanted to see what those sun-darked cheeks looked like with his cock in them. "Do it again," he growled.

Gawain's hands came up to hold his hips tentatively, asking permission even in the way he touched. He closed his mouth around him again and this time he went a little further, sucked gently but insistently. 

Lancelot exhaled before he could moan. If this was the road to hell, then he was no longer interested in salvation. He would sprint into the lake of fire if it meant Gawain would do this again. When he felt the knight begin to pull back, his hand flew to the top of his head, his fingertips dug in just enough to control but not enough to hurt him. In fact, he felt that he would never want to hurt him again.

But neither of them were done here.

"Keep going," Lancelot ordered. "Get what you want."

Gawain made a sound Lancelot was going to remember for the rest of his life, and eagerly intensified his efforts.

Now Lancelot did moan, hoping people in surrounding tents couldn't hear them. He didn't know where the knight learned to do this, and the prudish part of his Christian upbringing conspired darkly with his jealousy to twist his heart, but his body wouldn't hear of it. He was already balls-deep in a man's throat, committing at least three mortal sins, who had the time to care about purity? 

The jealousy dissolved as he realized that balls-deep wasn't figurative. 

He made a truly obscene moan now, holding Gawain's head in place as a demanding, sucking heat collected in the core of him. Is this what it had felt like, when the other Paladins had forced him to do this service for them all those years ago? He understood why they would be tempted to sin in that case, but with the rush of blood leaving his head entirely, he found two braincells to note that Gawain _wanted_ to do this, _wanted_ to do this for _him--_

Gawain rubbed his thumbs in circles on his hips, trying to get his attention. It was hard to breathe and he needed air.

For a moment, Lancelot studied his pleading expression. The knight was strong enough to free himself for certain, but had left such complete control to Lancelot that he would faint on his cock if he stayed silent now. He loosened his hold and nodded. While his loyal servant caught his breath, he whispered to him. "You're so good. The best I've ever had. I'm so close."

Gawain, panting, tilted his head up, expression clear even in the dark. Pleasure. Obedience. Willingness.

"Swallow me," Lancelot ordered. "And I will give you what you want."

He took him back into his mouth and then into his throat, taking a moment to hold back a gag, then swallowed. Swallowed again. Pushed his tongue forward slightly to increase the pressure and take him in as far as he could, and swallowed again.

Lancelot choked, growled, fought with his body. The muscles and heat around him, working his entire length, were just about enough to drag him over the line he had never crossed with anything but his own hand. But he needed one more thing, it was just not enough.

"Say my name," he gasped.

Gawain, mouth busy, made a noise of confusion. He couldn't really expect--

"Name me," he growled insistently, working his fingers into his hair.

Gawain raised an eyebrow, annoyance leaking through, but his face was pressed so close to Lancelot's belly that he was sure it wasn't seen. He did as well as he was able.

As his throat vibrated and tongue moved in the confines of his full mouth, Lancelot contemplated an empty Heaven. His vision blacked out, and a wave of burning pleasure swept through him. He came so hard that he sagged forward a little, felt Gawain's shoulders under his hands and the muscles of that solid form shifting to keep them both upright. He was somehow still coming-- did it usually take this long?-- and he keened as quietly as he could.

When he collected himself, Gawain was still gamely swallowing his load, licking him clean. He didn't seem to mind at all when Lancelot pushed against his shoulders to stand shakily on his own legs again.

"oh my god," Lancelot managed. "Stop."

Gawain ceased his care with an infuriating smirk. He hummed lowly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Stroked a hand against his leg as if calming a nervous horse. "Good?" he whispered.

Lancelot arched an eyebrow at his smugness. "Good enough. Get up."

The knight's smug expression didn't leave immediately, but the cold night air was enough to change it to a grimace as he undressed.

"Shirt too. All of it."

"It's cold," he protested quietly.

Lancelot lifted his chin, pleased to drag this out while he recovered from what was definitely, annoyingly, the best orgasm of his life.

Gawain grumbled and removed his shirt and underclothes, until he stood completely bare and shivering.

Lancelot's gaze almost immediately fell on the perfectly formed but completely flaccid cock hanging between his legs. "You're not... Interested?"

He blushed from his cheekbones to his collarbone. "I am. _Definitely._ Interested." He grimaced sheepishly. "It's very cold. And it's been... A very long time. Maybe... If it's not too much to ask?"

The Ash Man tipped his head to the side, willing to hear the request.

"Warm me up?"

He smiled. "Get in the bed."

Gawain smiled back, grabbing the blanket from the chair and climbing into the bed. He threw the blanket over himself, depriving Lancelot of that scarred, sculpted, vine-bound view.

Lancelot spontaneously developed an interest in the seasons. He found he couldn't wait for summertime. He took the other blanket from the frozen ground, shook it out, and slid into the bed next to him. They carefully arranged themselves in the limited space. Then Lancelot opened his arms.

For the second time that night, Gawain gazed at him with awe, then tucked himself against his side, one arm curling over him to hold him close. He cautiously kept his weight on his own side, not sure where the borderline was.

Lancelot physically pulled Gawain onto his chest, wrapping both arms around him possessively.

He gave a happy grunt, then a hummed quietly. Then his breath began to even out.

Lancelot smothered a chuckle. So much for warming him up. He planted a kiss on top of his head, and contented himself with giving Gawain what he needed, instead of what he wanted.


	8. Handle towards my hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Kay and Saeghin.

Nimue found the Red Spear reclining in a chair in the command tent, reading a leaf of parchment. "Oh. Good morning."

"Good morning," she greeted without looking up. "There's a situation."

She nodded. "Yes, there usually is. What is it this time? Did my father drape someone in entrails and convince them to seek their fortune off a cliff?"

Red Spear blinked at her. "Does that happen a lot?"

"More than I'd like," she tipped her head to the side and smiled in a way that revealed the joke. "Seriously, what's the situation?"

"There are raiders nearby. Not mine." She put the parchment back in the table and sat forward. "Fey Guard reported them here," she planted two fingers a few inches off the north of the map, away from the camp. "My crew reported seeing four longboats here," she planted two fingers of her other hand south and a bit east of the camp."

"It looks like they will just miss us," Nimue mused. "It seems wise to keep our heads down, extinguish the fires for a couple of days, and stay away from the river. How long ago was the band to the north spotted?"

"Eight hours."

"They're already about here then, with the mud as it has been," she placed a pebble on the road. 

Red Spear shifted in her chair, considering.

"You want to go out and meet them."

She pursed her lips and tipped her head from one side to the other. "Yyyyes but also no. I want to take a party around behind them and leave another in ambush here," she moved another pebble to a high place in the terrain where the road ran between two wooded hills.

"And if the boats are expecting them? If they've sent ravens?"

"A fair concern. We should plant a false trail." 

Nimue considered this with visible misgivings. "This skirmish is too close to the camp. There are not enough warriors left to take the crews of four longboats, especially with my tactician out of action and my mages... Indisposed. We need to rest and stay unseen. Wait until they pass, and we can sneak into the north."

She sighed. "I will take the crown of this place, but I need your fighters and your knowledge of the land. I can't do that if you mean to stay in the north."

"Just the peaceful ones will stay. King Lot won't have any southern warriors in his land, but he's not cruel enough to turn away farmers and tradespeople." Nimue poured them both a cup of cold tea.

Red Spear made a face. "How many kings does this tiny island have?"

"Too many," she laughed. "And not enough queens by far."

She raised her little wooden cup in agreement. "If you think this King Lot will keep your people safe, then I cannot keep you from that plan. But I need a fight to keep my people from making one up, for entertainment."

"I empathize. I wish I didn't, but I do. Hiding is boring and exhausting and it sucks the spirit out of people." She sighed and considered the map. "Take a unit of my Fey Guard with you. Have them set some fires in this forest. Approach from the east, in case you're spotted. They'll think we're camped farther east, and if you are overcome or the raiders from the boats come looking, we will have enough warning to withdraw west and north. I hope you aren't overcome though, Ms Spear."

She snorted into her teacup. "While it's just us in this room, my name is Guinevere. If you call me that in front of any man, I will have to kill you."

"I completely understand," Nimue laughed. 

Guinevere knocked back the rest of the tea and stood up. "I better get them moving. Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Thank _you,_ Your Majesty," Nimue grinned at her.

She gave a dainty mock curtsey and practically skipped out of the command tent.

\--

Lancelot woke first, again, and slipped into a panic. There was something lying on top of him. A body. Did he fall in battle? Corpses. He smelled blood and pain and fire. His eyes snapped open and he sat upright, right hand reaching for his sword.

It was quiet. There weren't sounds of fire popping or hissing, no screams or battle cries. He was in a tent. A bed. Nothing was immediately wrong. He took several deep breaths, looking around to reassure himself. 

He noticed Gawain's limp hand across his lap, his unlaced trousers, his missing shirt and boots. _Oh._ He thought the entire word, oh. _Oh. Right._ He got himself under control, then carefully shifted to check on Gawain.

Gawain hadn't responded at all when Lancelot had sat up and dumped him off to the side. His skin was very cold, and the circles under his eyes were back. 

Lancelot cursed under his breath. He checked for a pulse, then lay the back of his hand against that resting forehead. Fluttering. Too hot. "Oh." He spoke the whole word, oh. It hung in the air over his sleeping... lover? 

He slipped out of the bed and quickly laced his pants, pulled on his shirts against the cold. He knelt and slipped his arms around Gawain's too-still form, pulling him into the warmest part of the bed. He tucked both blankets around him and then threw Gawain's cloak on the stack, and then his own. 

He leaned over him and brushed his fingers over his temple, shook his shoulder gently. "Please." It hung over him next to the sound of his dread, please.

Gawain stirred and murmured wordlessly.

"Wake up," he begged, but these words fell as soon as he spoke them.

The knight's face twitched, and he drew in a breath a little deeper than the previous. Lines of strain deepened alongside his eyes. In whatever slumber gripped him, he had heard his voice, and even now he was struggling to obey.

Lancelot pressed a kiss to his lips, then rested his forehead against his brow and whispered. "I'm going for help. Live."

Then he was out of the tent and sprinting towards the healers' circle. The morning life of the camp was less lively than usual, and colder. The campfires had all gone out. Voices were low, when people spoke at all. People watched him sprint by but did not stop him.

He stopped abruptly in front of the first healer he saw. The much shorter girl looked absolutely terrified of him. "Help."

The word hovered between them, suspended in the weight of their combined fear.

"Help." He repeated more quietly, aware that a refugee camp was entirely powered by rumors. "Gawain." 

To her credit, she snapped out of it and started working. "Come with me." She led him into the nearest tent and regarded the two healers who were drinking tea and talking. "Out."

They left quickly.

She turned to him. "What's the situation?"

"He's cold and he won't wake," he reported, feeling panic bubble up behind the adrenaline. He screwed his self-control to the sticking place. "The vines came out of his side. He's not bleeding but I don't understand what's happened. I thought he was healed."

She nodded. "Go to the command tent. Get Nimue. Tell her Pym says follow you and shut up. Don't talk on the way."

He nodded and ran again. He passed the Red Spear on the way. 

"Hey Ash Man, do you--"

"No." He sprinted past her, into the tent.

Nimue looked up in alarm. "Yes?"

"Gawain. Pym. Follow. Shut up."

She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes, but got to her feet anyway. "What?"

He held up a hand briefly and took a deeper breath. "It's Gawain. Pym says follow me and shut up."

She nodded and gestured for him to lead the way.

He was pleased to learn she could run at least as fast as he could. They made it back to the tent as fast as they could, but Pym was already there before them. She had folded the blankets back, and in the light of day the ruin of Gawain's chest and belly was more apparent.

It knocked the air right out of him. The wound on the side was healed, but he was still a mess of vines and yellowing bruises, and he somehow seemed _so much smaller_ when he lay still and defenseless.

Nimue moved to the side across from Pym, her face falling in sorrow and something darker. "How is he?"

"He's overdone it," Pym reported, words clipped and terse. "Surprising exactly nobody." She spread some kind of menthol-scented paste over his upper chest. "And he's caught himself a chill. I don't like the way he's breathing. I don't like what his pulse is doing. I don't like the weight he's lost." She followed Nimue's eyes. "There is that, though."

Nimue's fingers hovered over the incongruently perfect skin of his abdomen, where the knife wound used to be. She turned slowly to look at Lancelot. "When?"

He swallowed. "Last night."

"How?" She said the whole word.

He bowed his head, trying to think if an answer.

She waited.

"I touched the vines," he said carefully and slowly. "There were... Voices, but not voices, in my mind. I tasted bitterness and rot. Then I prayed to the Hidden and asked them to heal him."

She looked at him for a long moment, perhaps looking for a lie. She didn't find one. She looked back at Gawain's slack face, and stayed very quiet. It was too similar to something she had seen before. She stood up abruptly and faced away from him. "They heard you."

Pym finished what she was doing and rolled the blankets up to her patient's chin, patting them down on the sides. "Well. They did half a job and it wiped him completely out. Or he's been doing manual labor in the night, I don't--" she stopped.

Both of the women turned to Lancelot.

His eyes widened and he suddenly felt like a mouse surrounded by cats. They might have to negotiate who pounced first, but either way, he was _done for._

"Lancelot," Pym casually began. "You found him first this morning, isn't it so?"

He cleared his throat, finding it suddenly dry. "F-found?"

"Your guard hasn't heard anything from you in days," Nimue mused.

"Guard?" Lancelot squeaked.

She smirked. "I dismissed the guard entirely last night, because I expect you aren't actually sleeping in your tent. You've been here, haven't you?"

He stood very, very still. "Yes."

The women exchanged a glance, smirking widely. 

"Will he recover?" Lancelot asked, still stalk-still.

Pym shrugged. "This has never happened to anyone before, as far as I know. Polly couldn't say one way or the other when he arrived, and I can't say so now. But this healing-- and whatever you two have been doing-- needs to wait until he's stronger." She stood and packed away her supplies. "If he wakes today or tonight, get some food into him. I don't care if you have to hold him down and cram it into his stubborn face. Don't let him get up and walk around. Keep him warm. We can't light any fires, but I'm sure you'll find a way." She grinned at him and patted his arm as she moved past him to leave. "Polly will check in tonight, and I will visit tomorrow morning."

Lancelot exhaled slowly.

Nimue sat on the side of the bed and smoothed her hand over Gawain's hair. "He is very dear to me," she informed Lancelot. "He's my hero and my advisor, my most loyal friend, and a true knight." She looked up at Lancelot finally, eyes boring into his soul like his body was a thin shell of nothingness, as if she had never feared anything in her life from this killer that burned her village. "If you hurt him ever again," she promised him, "I will eat your heart." She stood and crossed the tent to stand beside him, and though she had to look up at him, Lancelot felt very small. "I am so pleased that you're here to take care of him."

Then she left.

Lancelot felt like he had narrowly avoided his own execution. He moved to the side of the bed and sat, hands hovering indecisively over the still form. He wanted to touch, but he wasn't sure how to not do any harm. He settled for just reassuring himself that he was still breathing. He hung his head and made a frustrated noise.

Gawain had been so willing. Eager. He had wanted and he had began it, asked for what he wanted.

Lancelot had just given him what he wanted, taken what he was able to give.

Right?

He didn't realise he had said the word allowed, but there it was, hanging in the cold morning air. A puff of his breath. The whole world.

He slipped under the mound of blankets and carefully wrapped his arms around him, willed his body heat to be enough. His feelings of power and adequacy were forgotten. The praise and faith he'd received seemed small and irrelevant. Gawain's death-wish echoed in his mind. _Yours is the blade I want to die on, Ash Man._ He had thought at the time that Gawain was giving him a power he did not want, but that was his to wield. His to decide.

He was completely powerless against this.


	9. When the shoulder cries more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short interlude to set us up for the second half.

Gawain didn't wake up before Polly came to visit. If she had any opinions about finding Lancelot wrapped around her patient, she didn't share them. Instead, she checked Gawain's vitals, asked if he had moved or awoken, and spread more of the menthol-smelling plant paste on his upper chest.

"What is that?" Lancelot asked. He was using the opportunity of her visit to eat, drink, and stretch his legs, and definitely not fleeing the smell of that paste. Definitely not.

"It's a combination of herbs. The vapors will help to open his lungs. A chest injury is always a danger to the lungs." She capped the jar and put it back in her bag. "When the body experiences pain in the chest, it doesn't take air as deeply, and the lungs weaken. I can't express strongly enough how bad that would be right now, in winter, and without proper medicines." She observed that the painkiller she had left was still in its place on the table. "Hand me that."

Lancelot complied.

She lifted Gawain's head and poured just a little into his mouth, held him up just long enough for it to work its way down his throat by gravity. Then she corked the bottle and gave it back. "When he wakes, make him eat and drink. _Make him._ "

And then she left Lancelot to gaze morosely at his unchanged form.

Squirrel visited a bit after, timidly sneaking into the tent and practically onto the bed before Lancelot noticed him. "Nimue said he needed to rest and not to bother him so I'm not bothering, I'm just checking in," he explained matter-of-factly as he climbed onto the bed and gave his papa a squeeze.

Lancelot smiled in spite of the boy's seriousness, and patted him on the back. "I see that."

He stayed for about half an hour, then announced he was going to scout around the camp.

Lancelot hovered around for another hour, then climbed under the blankets again and resumed being as useful as he knew how, generating heat.

When Pym woke him the next morning, nothing had changed. He noticed the groove between her furrowed brow was deeper than the day before. 

"He hasn't moved at all," he told her.

"Well," she announced. "Shit. We will need to get some water in him at the very least. And he hasn't relieved himself this entire time so. He's definitely dehydrated."

"That... Happens?"

"Oh yes. The body needs what it needs. Don't worry, the bed sheets would have taken the worst of it," she told him with strained cheerfulness. 

He edged farther away. 

"Did he manage to get some protein before he went under?"

Lancelot cleared his throat awkwardly.

She smirked at him. "The deer, you idiot."

"Ah. Then yes."

"That's good. We still need to get him to drink some water. I will wait until the end of my shift to wake up on his own, but if he doesn't, we'll have to get Nimue to wake him up the magical way."

"She can do that?"

Pym shrugged. "It's not the same as being really awake, but it's easier than dumping water down his throat and hoping it doesn't end up in his lungs." She rolled the blankets up to his chin again. "You should go for a walk. Clean up. Eat something. I will wait with him."

Lancelot nodded, and escaped the tent for awhile. He washed mechanically, ate without tasting anything, and walked a circuit around the camp to stretch his legs and warm up. The fires were still out, and the whole camp seemed to share his apprehension. Or else they were all hiding in the grey of winter, under the cover of frost and furs, like the slumbering knight.

When he returned (with a whole bag of bread and salt fish from the very concerned cooks who definitely hadn't heard anything about Gawain but 'you know just in case') he found the situation unchanged.

It wasn't until midday that he finally felt he wasn't alone in the tent. He looked over to Gawain to find him still, breathing shallow and slow, but at last, eyes open. 

Lancelot slapped him.

Gawain sucked in a breath.

Lancelot leaned in and kissed him furiously. Then he sat back and slapped him again. "How dare you."

He blinked in confusion.

"You gave me the responsibility to kill you. You gave it to me. It's mine. Then you try to kill yourself like _that._ How dare you?"

He made a confused noise.

Lancelot stood back and got himself under control. Now was not the time. "Polly and Pym said you need water and to eat. So let's do that."

Gawain tried to rise, but only managed to frustrate himself.

"Don't," he advised. "You really don't know your own limits at all, do you?"

He huffed.

"I'm still here. Relax." He lifted Gawain and slid into the bed behind him, letting him lie back against his chest with a leg to ether side. He tucked his chin against the side of his head and brought the water up to his mouth, waited for him it part his lips before pouring just a mouthful at a time. When he felt fingertips against his wrist, he put the water aside and changed it for a bread roll, picking it apart into bits and putting each bit between his teeth one at a time. 

After perhaps half the roll, he tried to turn his head away.

Lancelot grabbed his chin with one hand. "You will eat the entire thing."

Gawain settled for the moment and accepted his fate.

When he had taken the last of the bread, he relaxed against him, turned his head to rest he forehead against his cheekbone--

Lancelot slipped out from his position and lowered him against the bed. When Gawain curled his fingers in his shirt, he removed the hand and pushed it under the blankets. "No. Not-- not after that."

The initial look of confused drifted away after a moment, leaving behind a resigned, tired expression.

By the time he had retrieved the bottle of painkiller from the table, there was nothing left of the sky man that had collapsed in his arms days ago, who had tried to hide behind the soldier at first, whom he had to coax out with care and commands. Who had unlaced his pants and his self-control. 

Now there was just the knight. And the knight took his medicine dutifully, suffered the coldness of his anger and the witner air, and went back to sleep without complaint.


	10. Alteration Found

Arthur was confused.

This was not an uncommon occurrence even by his own reckoning, but today did seem to be more confusing than most days. The strange started at breakfast and then just kept getting stranger. 

First, Percival joined him for breakfast. This was not completely unheard of, but it was unusual for him to join his breakfast without either Nimue arriving first or Gawain appearing to nag him about something. But this time, it was just Percival; and even stranger, he didn't talk.

Arthur tried, he really did. "Hey buddy."

"I'm a knight. If you call me that again, I will cut you."

"Alright," he amended carefully. "Hey friend. You seem upset. What's on your mind?"

Percival picked at his bread and threw a mouldy part on the ground with more force than was really needed.

"Are you worried about your papa?" Arthur guessed. "It's a little scary to see someone you admire get hurt. But he has the best healers and even Lancelot looking after him."

"Lancelot is mad at him." Percival studied his bread closely, as if hoping to find something to murder there.

"Is Lancelot ever not mad at anyone?"

He tore his bread in half. "He used to love papa."

Arthur blinked. "Gawain has been back in camp for _five days_ , how did he... What..."

Percival chewed his bread violently.

"I'm sure whatever it is, they'll figure it out like adults, when... You know, when he wakes up." 

He sighed. 

"Hey, you know that no matter what happens, your papa is always going to love you, right?" Arthur put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a comforting squeeze.

Squirrel deflated and hugged him back.

It continued after breakfast, when he went to the command tent for the morning meeting. Nimue was already there-- he suspected she slept there most nights-- sitting with Kaze and passing pages of parchment between them. A scribe assistant sat nearby, scraping the top layer off old parchment for reuse. 

The Red Spear positively _flounced_ into the tent a few moments later, her grin so feral that he was certain someone was either about to die, or just had.

Nimue looked up-- and Arthur's heart rose to his throat-- "How's the situation?"

She grinned wider. "All taken care of."

"What situation?" Arthur asked.

"Nothing," the Red Spear assured him.

"It's all taken care of," Nimue echoed, passing a cup of tea to her.

They lifted their teacups to each other with mirrored smirks.

Then the weird got weirder. Lancelot entered the tent with an armful of parchment rolls in one arm. 

Kaze didn't even look up to gesture to him. "Bring those. How is the herd?"

"Forty-three head able, six lamed," he reported quietly. "And two head of ox."

"We will eat the lamed over the next week," she decided as she helped him offload the parchment into a crate next to the desk.

"Has anyone seen my stockings?" Pym wondered.

Arthur hadn't even seen her when he came in, but there she was.

"I hung them here yesterday to dry. The roads in this camp are more like trenches. I'll be glad to see the back of it."

"Are we leaving somewhere?" Merlin asked.

Arthur was sure he was losing it. How many people could fit in this tent?

Percival pressed the issue of occupancy by slipping in after Merlin and crouching in the corner moodily.

The one human man in the room threw his arms in the air. "Wait. Hold it. Please. Sorry. What did I miss?"

"We're leaving in a week," Nimue told them all with her best air of authority. "To the north, to escort all non-combatants to the Orkneys."

"The Orkneys?" He echoed.

"That's... what I said, yes."

"No, I'm sorry. I mean, why the Orkneys?"

Nimue sighed. "Because we can't fight a war and protect two thousand farmers and tradespeople. And King Lot is a mean and proud type, but he won't turn away his own kind. He's agreed to re-home as many as are not warriors, provided we take our warriors with us when we return south." 

"He's agreed, so you already asked him."

"I didn't have to. Sir Gawain did." She watched him for a moment, then looked around the crowded tent. "All caught up now?"

They looked around at each other. Merlin spoke for all of them. "I think that will about do it."

She nodded once. "Then I will need you all to get your respective responsible areas packing as quietly as possible. We are still hiding, and will be even on the road. No fires, handle the refuse, leave no trail."

"What about our wounded?" Lancelot asked when it became apparent no one else would.

"We will eat the lamed," Kaze repeated and bared her teeth in a fierce smile.

Most of the tent occupants laughed, which clued him in that it was a joke, but he shifted uncomfortably anyway.

"Don't worry," Nimue reassured him. "There are carts enough that we can make a warm place for him even on the road. Now all of you, get on with it."

They split and commenced the heavy business of getting an entire camp ready to move. Arthur chased after Lancelot, not wanting to stay in the tent with Nimue and the Red Spear. "Hey. How is he? Is he well enough for visitors now?"

"I don't know," Lancelot told him coldly.

"Ah. Well. From what Squirrel said, you two-- hey, where are you going? What the hell?"

Lancelot had turned and walked off in the middle of his sentence.

Arthur was definitely confused. He contemplated this turn of events for awhile, then shrugged and went about his morning inspections. Maybe Percival had been mistaken.

Near the end of his shifts, he managed to look in on Gawain, but found him fast asleep. He couldn't have spent too much time awake in his condition since it had taken a turn for the worse a few days ago. 

So how on earth would Percival have though Lancelot loved him? Who, Arthur wondered, could fall in love in just a few days of limited contact with another person? _Too strange._


	11. Take up these burdens

By the third day, Gawain was able to stand and walk, and did so as often as he could manage. He didn't take over any of his former tasks in the camp, but he left his tent and sat in the sun when there was sunlight.

Percival stuck to his side like a shadow, leaving only when commanded. He somehow managed to run interference, making sure Lancelot stayed well away from his papa.

On the last day in camp, Gawain appeared in the command tent earlier than almost anyone else. Nimue found Gawain drinking cold tea and locking up boxes of maps.

"Hello, you," she greeted happily, and pulled him into a gentle hug. "I'm so pleased you're here."

He smiled into her hair. "Ah, my Nimue. Queen of all that she sees."

She stood back but kept a hand on his arm fondly. "I've arranged a covered cart for you, with straw and blankets. You can ride in the forward unit, with me and Arthur."

He made a face. "I'll ride on my horse, thank you."

"Well, the cart will be in the forward part of the train anyway, so if you tire or feel ill, you can retire there to be out of sight." She gave him another gentle squeeze. "We all know how strong you are. There is nothing left that needs proving."

"Yes, but I--"

"Gawain." She looked at him meaningfully. "There is nothing you have to prove, ever again. You're already a legend." Then she smiled. "I won't tell anyone about the grass snake."

He scowled playfully. "That's a low blow. I accept your cart and your silence, my queen."

She nodded, and began puttering around the command tent, packing things away and getting ready to move. By the time the others arrived, there was nothing left to do but collapse the tent and load everything into the carts. 

And as they did, Percival pointedly did not even look at Lancelot. The boy's reticence seemed to trouble the ash man, but he did not comment. He took Goliath to the back of the train with Kaze, to guard and keep pace.

The first day was uneventful but, due to the length of the winter sunlight, not very long. As it wanted, so too did Gawain's strength, and without fuss he tied Gringolet's reins to the back of the cart and retired. At the end of it, he joined Nimue's circle around what would have been a fire if they weren't hiding, but instead was just a circle of dirt. They ate a cold supper together and shared news from around the caravan.

Lancelot tried not to look at Gawain as much as possible. When he tried to speak with Percival, the boy got up and went to sit alone in Gawain's cart. 

At Lancelot's pained look, Gawain stood. "I will speak to him."

"You don't have to--"

"I do. This is silly."

\--

Gawain climbed stiffly into the cart and sat next Percival, who had pulled his knees up to his chest and was hiding his face in them. "Sir Percival," he prompted before he laid his hand on his tiny back. "Something has upset you. Please share that burden with me, so that I can help you resolve it."

Percival made an angry little sound, then lifted his tear-streaked face. "He broke his promises. I really believed he was different from before, that he could change, but he hurt you again and I want to kill him."

Gawain threw his arm over him and pulled him into a hug. "My loyal, brave son." He kissed the top of his head. "He didn't hurt me in any way that needs revenging."

Percival returned the hug and clung to him tightly. "You were asleep for three days. I thought you were going to die, but he was the only one they would let stay with you. You were getting better, but then he hurt you."

"He didn't hurt me. I hurt me."

His tiny hands wrapped around his armor and pulled tighter if possible, as he weighed the gravity of that statement. "What... What do you mean? Like Lancelot used to hurt himself?"

"No. Not like that. I knew that I needed time to recover, food and rest, but I also knew food was in short supply in the camp and that I had obligations that kept everyone else going. So I took neither." He sighed. "I collapsed under the weight of my own pride and stupidity. Lancelot is angry with me because he had been tasked with looking after me. I made that task impossible. He has good reason to be angry."

Percival sniffled and considered. "You knew you needed food and rest or that you would die. And you knew that dying would hurt us all. Me, too."

"I never thought it through that far," Gawain admitted. "If I had, I surely would not have done it."

"You're an _idiot._ I was so scared." And here his voice broke, and he shed tears into his papa's shoulder.

The knight held him and patted his back gently. "It's alright now. It's alright. I am still here."

Percival cried himself to sleep before letting go of Gawain.

\--

In the morning, Percival joined the circle and breakfast by walking up to Lancelot and sitting down next to him.

Lancelot raised both eyebrows in surprise, clearly nervous about what would happen next.

"My papa," Percival told him matter-of-factly, "is a right moron and I'm glad you saved him."

Lancelot couldn't do anything but laugh the kind of laugh that's accompanies released anxieties. "So he is."

"I'm sorry for being a brat," he continued. "I misunderstood the situation and uncharitably I believed you were a liar and a killer. It was wrong of me. Can you forgive me?"

"A thousand times and with ease," Lancelot accepted his apology. "Because I am both of those things."

"But not to us."

He smiled a small, genuine smile. Just like that, this small thunderstorm of a boy had teased out the intricate difference between a murderer and a soldier, a liar and a statesman, the point of a sword and it's hilt-- a Weeping Monk and a Lancelot. "Never to you," he swore. "On my life."

Percival threw himself onto Lancelot for an unannounced hug, then sat back and did his best to copy the postures of the other warriors around the fire.

Many smiles were being exchanged over his head. Gawain looked particularly proud of his son this morning, and was glancing around to gauge everyone's reactions. Nimue was well pleased. Pym looked like she might cry. Even the Red Spear was giving him a smiling nod.

"What are you lot smiling about?" Squirrel barked. "It's the crack of dawn, drink your tea and get to work!"

\--

The next evening, while they were caring for their horses and stowing saddles for the night, Lancelot approached Gawain. 

Gawain was bent over with a hoof in one hand and a pick in the other. "Hello," he greeted, voice slightly strained with the effort.

"Let me do that," Lancelot tried to order him.

He shook his head once. "The hard part is getting to here. Now that I'm here, it's not so bad." He flicked mud and pebbles onto the ground.

"You're a moron," he reminded him.

"True in the morning," Gawain agreed. "True in the night."

Lancelot crossed his arms. "I want to help you."

He regarded the solemn ash man with caution bordering on wariness. "We've tried this. It doesn't work. You can't trust me and I can't let go." He scooped a small twig out of Gringolet's hoof. "I will do a better job looking after myself. You just... When it's time, tell me."

"Time?" he startled.

Gawain released the foot and stood up, leaned on Gringolet's side in a way that would have looked casual to anyone else, but to Lancelot just looked tired. "You were right. I gave that responsibility to you. It was wrong of me to try and take it back. So I will keep alive until you decide my usefulness is at an end, or until you can't bear to look at me anymore. Then you'll keep your promise."

Lancelot's heart stopped beating. There was a rushing sound in his ears. "I..." His throat was so dry. He swallowed. It didn't help. "I thought we were past all that."

Gawain smiled a fake, crooked smile. "This is how you can help me. Keep this from me, so that I don't use it too soon."

"I will." He was quiet for a long time, trying to process what couldn't be processed. "Gawain, I... I am sorry for my anger."

He shook his head. "You were right to be angry."

"I am sorry for the way I was angry, then."

"Don't," he advised. "It's better for us both if you don't do this. I am incapable. We will both be hurt." He bullied Gringolet into giving up his back hoof, and began picking.

Lancelot made a frustrated noise and turned, marched away before he could say something they would both regret.

After he was gone, Gawain made a quiet noise of agreement.


	12. Merlin's Purple Prose Protection Program

The second and third days went much the same as the first, quiet and uneventful. On the fourth day, they began hearing wolf calls in the distance.

"I can hear nine voices," Kaze reported. "Most of them are young. They'll attack anyone who strays on their own."

Gawain nodded. "A group of ten Fey Guard. Four archers, six with pikes and swords." He stood up.

"NO," a chorus of voices ordered him.

He sat back down.

"I'll attend," Lancelot volunteered. "I can track them."

Kaze nodded. "I could use the exercise and you're a good hunting companion. Keeping the others quiet will be the challenge."

"Two Fey Guard and eight archers, then?" He suggested with a toothy grin.

Kaze mirrored it.

"You two choose whomever pleases you from the guard and Ms. Spear and Gawain can keep us safe with the rest," Nimue approved.

Percival stood up excitedly.

"NO," the chorus sounded again.

He sat down with a huff.

"Start out after tea time?" Kaze suggested.

"Love to," Lancelot confirmed.

That evening as the Fey caravan rolled to a halt and the guard shift rotated to first night watch, Gawain strapped his sword to his side and mounted his horse to make what promised to be the first of many slow, boring circuits along the west flank of the train. The caravan drew close for the night, circling carts around the horses where they could to prevent predators and scavengers from spooking them.

Tonight, they risked a few fires against the cold, and to reassure the skittish who had themselves been spooked by the wolves. And Gawain had to admit, having the fires at one side and the Ash fey at the other was a great comfort. The rest of the attack party, as well, he supposed, but mostly Lancelot.

The wolves began calling in the distance. Maybe it was the sense of calm that affected his perception of them, or the melancholy sense of loss he was struggling not to acknowledge until they were all in a safe place where he could unpack his feelings. Maybe it was the lingering ache in his chest from his magically-restructured lung. The wolven voices seemed quieter this evening, almost morose. Lonely.

Well, he supposed that meant it was probably a trap. He twisted his sword handle one way and then the other, breaking the blade loose from the frost, and unslung his bow from his back. Gringolet brought his ears back, sensing his rider's change in disposition, then flicked them to the side and huffed a great cloud of horse breath, letting Gawain know he was paying attention and ready for action. 

Gawain sighed. The moon and stars were so beautiful. He would have really liked to have had the chance to admire them tonight.

\--

Lancelot was pleased as punch to be off his leash and free to wander the woods. He could have escaped at any time utterly untraceable, but he found he didn't want to. The fey at his back were his friends-- maybe not brothers, yet-- and he was as happy to accompany them north as he would have been to go haring off on his own adventures. And now he would perhaps come back with bragging rights a nice wolf pelt to sew into his cloak. It was getting colder the farther north they went, and his cloak was made for decidedly more temperate climates.

He sniffed here and there, mostly for show, and led the quiet detachment of Fey Guard farther into the forest. The wet dog and old urine smell was strong; the pack was close. But the smell was characteristic of older animals, and sick ones. There were no scents from younger pack members. Kaze had said--

"It's a trap, go back," Lancelot declared, breaking the silence and gesturing to the others.

Almost as soon as he had, the wolves broke cover and ran for them. He and Kaze drew blades and engaged them, while the archers in the trees above rained arrows. In a matter of moments, the four wolves-- four old, scarred, and matted wolves-- were corpses at their feet. Kaze and Lancelot each sported some new and interesting scratches, but nothing life-threatening. 

"How did you know?" Kaze asked, catching her breath.

"They smell different than you said they would be. We need to go back. The rest are going for the prize."

She swore. "Damn smart, these wolves."

"It's winter," one of the archers pointed out. "They are as desperate for meat as the rest of us."

Lancelot shifted his swords up to his back and began sprinting back towards the camp, not waiting for the crew behind him to be ready.

"Should we tell him?" a voice from the trees asked Kaze.

She shrugged. "He's been cooped up this whole time. He could probably use the exercise."

\--

By the time he arrived back at the camp, the rest of the pack had been extinguished utterly. Several were smouldering and smelled of ozone. Arthur sat patiently at the end of a cart, being fussed over by the healers. Gawain sat patiently next to him, being fussed over by Nimue and Merlin.

"You would find this as an excuse to get your shirt off," Arthur teased him.

"You just wish it bit you somewhere interesting," he clapped back.

"Quiet down, lads, or I'll convince these vines your faces need closing up," Nimue threatened as she and Merlin prodded at a newly-vine-wrapped bite wound on either side of his shoulder.

"That's not a real threat," Gawain dismissed. "At least, I'm pretty sure it's not."

"Your armor is just the worst," Arthur continued amiably.

"It does need repairs," he agreed.

Nimue grabbed his shoulder.

He openly smirked at Arthur's jealous look.

"Does this hurt?" She asked sweetly.

"Not badly, just--"

She dug her thumb into the wound.

He yelped, more indignant than in pain.

"You two quit that." She scowled pointedly at them both. 

Merlin shook his head slightly. "I bet it's totally gone by sunrise. Look how fast it's knitting the flesh together at the corners."

"Why aren't the others doing that?" Lancelot asked over the top of the conversation.

Gawain grimaced and nodded to him. "Welcome back. Are you well?"

"Yes, thank you." He raised his eyebrows at Merlin. "The other wounds. Why are they not healing like that?"

Merlin's mouth pulled to one side, then the other. "The simplest explanation is hatred. The other wounds were made with hatred, and it leaves a mark that even the Hidden are not eager to touch. Like a poison. So instead of healing the wounds, the Hidden's blessing is holding them closed and keeping out infection. But that's all." He pointed at the shoulder wound.

Lancelot tucked himself into the crowd of people who were marveling over the knight's shoulder, and leaned in close enough that he felt the heat off of Gawain's skin. He should have been able to smell if he was having any effect on the knight's composure, but... he wasn't. Gawain just sat placidly as ever, making jokes with Arthur.

Lancelot was hugely disappointed. He covered it with academic curiosity. "When I pulled the vines out if his side--" that at least made Gawain flinch. _Good,_ he thought vengefully. "--I was able to taste it. Like walnut hulls and old rot." 

Merlin nodded appreciatively. "You may have some talents. That's precisely what hate tastes like."

"How do _you_ know what hate tastes like?" Arthur demanded.

"I use it to flavor my tea," he answered without missing a beat. "You say you pulled the vines out of his side. Did he bleed?"

"Not significantly," Lancelot answered.

"No wonder he was wiped out. That wound was complex." He tilted his head back, studying Lancelot down his nose and thinking. 

Nimue regarded Lancelot even more carefully.

"Well, why can't Lance pull the rest of them out?" Arthur asked the obvious question, since no one else was going to. "If you're a wizard as well, and apparently the right type."

"It has to be fueled by a strong source of that which neutralizes hate," Merlin muttered.

Nimue's face fell.

"I can't do it anymore," Lancelot answered quietly. He imagined he saw the ghost of pain pass over Gawain's brow, but it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

Merlin gave a flippant shrug and clapped Gawain on the injured shoulder, hard. "Afraid there's nothing we can do. Sorry but also congratulations on the discovery that the magic works on new wounds even better than on the old! You'll be unstoppable, I'm sure." He grinned and turned, leaving the gaggle and meaning to go about his business.

Except that Lancelot followed him. "What did you mean?"

"Specificity is the key to efficient communication, young warrior," Merlin advised him.

"What did you mean by 'no wonder he was wiped out,' about the wound being complex?"

"Ah," he paused for a moment, near to a campfire, and warmed his hands as he elaborated. "Your long knife sliced through his inferior mesenteric artery, intestines, kidney, and spinal cord, then the bacteria it left behind started an inflammatory reaction that bruised the surrounding tissue and sent him into sepsis."

Lancelot stared evenly at him. "I don't know what any of that means."

"It's the Dark Ages, no one knows what any of that means," Merlin lamented. "Please be content with the knowledge that the wound you gave him was hugely complicated and led to his eventual death."

"And healing it?" he pressed, not content at all but also not willing to let this gangly old psychopath make him squirm. 

"Nearly did him in again," he replied. "Regenerating that much tissue, only a few days after we regenerated his eye and half his lung?" He whistled lowly. "Bet you're not going to try that again now that you're on our side." He angled his head, considering. "Or maybe you will, once you hear how smug he'll be about the magical healing powers."

Lancelot grimaced, but not for the reason Merlin was expecting. "So there's... No chance that I... Tired him out some other way?"

"I can happily reassure you that you could not possibly have fucked him into a coma," Merlin smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "There now, aren't we glad that's all in the open. Any more questions?"

"No."

"Good! Then I advise you for your own safety and sanity to stop following me." And he left.

Lancelot stood at the campfire, registering at last that there were eight other people enjoying their dinner around the fire, now _very_ intently pretending not to have heard anything. He glanced around at them sheepishly, but in the firelight he was sure he looked terrifying anyway. "I um. Apologize. For that. Please enjoy your evening." He marched away as quickly as he could, but wasn't far enough away to avoid overhearing the whispers as they started.


	13. Acts of Service

Lancelot stayed up later than usual, mostly pacing. With the weight of responsibility for what Gawain had tried to do lifted from him, he found himself drifting and a lost. Gawain was not only his rescuer and ransomer, but potentially his only friend in the world-- except Percival-- and the only person he had ever in his life felt comfortable around, if only for a few days. He missed the illusion of control, and was quickly beginning to realize that, as much as he had believed he was doing it for the sky man's benefit, perhaps _Gawain_ had been doing it for _him._ Yet another act of service from someone who had nothing more to give.

_Bastard._

He stopped suddenly. Nimue was quietly standing in his way, studying him. 

"You're digging a trench in the ground?" she asked.

"No?"

"What's all this pacing about, then?" She kept her chin angled down, gazing up at him with wide, almost innocent eyes.

He immediately felt defensive. "Why do you ask?"

She smiled. "Because I think I know what it's about already, but I want to be sure."

He weighed the relative benefits of a confession against telling a queen to piss off. Frustrated with the outcome of his analysis, he huffed quietly and came to stand a little closer to her, but still out if arm's reach. "Gawain."

She nodded. "Thought so. What happened with you two? You were so eager to meet him, and then with him practically every second, and then... Not. I know he has that effect on people sometimes, but I've never seen it like this. Not with someone like you."

"What kind of people does he usually have this kind of effect on?" He tried to bite back, but it came out as petulant.

She laughed silently. "Woman, usually. Sometimes younger men. Any given season, he usually has half a dozen suitors. And I really do have hope that he will find the right person someday, but there's... A lot he has to carry. A lot of damage. Moreso, now. People sense that, eventually, and they leave."

Lancelot felt like a smouldering trash fire of a person for asking, but the question flew out of his mouth. "You?"

She barked a laugh. "No. First, he's my foster brother, so that would be weird. Second, he's the general of my army, and that's the kind of politics the Fey don't need on top of everything else. And lastly, if he and I... And it wouldn't work out... I think I'm his last confidant. And he doesn't even talk to me about anything personal after I brought him back from the dead." She shrugged helplessly. "I would never want to take that from him. He's my most loyal friend, who I can expect to be in my corner no matter what kind of mistakes I make. I will be lucky to find a partner like him in that respect, but it can't be him."

A long moment passed in comfortable silence while Lancelot sorted out his thoughts. "I tried." 

She nodded.

"He... He tried." He ran a hand through his hair. "He wants..."

She raised her chin, patiently waiting for the rest of the sentence.

Lancelot took a mental step back. No one could know what Gawain wanted. It would ruin their trust in him and at a time when he was balancing so much on his shoulders, that might ruin both the Fey and him. He exhaled sharply.

_No one could know, except him._

"He trusted me with some very delicate admissions about himself and I don't want to do wrong by him in that regard, no matter what passes between us now."

Nimue's eyebrows shot up. "Oh. That's..."

Lancelot ground his teeth. "That's not something you expected him to trust a killer with?" If only she knew the nature of the admission, maybe she would change her mind.

"No, actually, that's not it at all. I don't expect him to trust _anybody_ with _anything_ about himself. This is heartening news. His previous lovers have all complained that he is like some mechanical thing, willing to serve them without ever expressing a clear feeling about anything."

Lancelot's face fell. "There is that, as well. He treats sex like an act of service. Like something he wants to do, sure, but not for his own benefit. And in his condition, what he did--"

"Please stop there," Nimue begged, "I do have to work with him daily."

He nodded and changed directions. "I thought he did himself in for me."

"That's why you split as soon as he began to recover." Nimue gave him an empathetic look. "That makes a lot of sense. It's possibly the wisest thing you could have done."

He frowned. "How can you say that? I hurt your friend."

Nimue gave half a shrug. "You need to protect yourself. Staying in a pairing that harms you will only eventually harm him too. Besides, it's impossible to know if anything really can hurt him anymore." She held up a hand as he started to speak. "I don't mean the magic. I mean, he's so deep in that shell of his, and there is so much in there with him, that what happens on the surface doesn't even seem to register anymore."

He contemplated that nausously.

"On the other hand, you did murder him, so. Maybe."

He looked up sharply.

She smirked.

"You're joking. You made a joke out of that."

"I learned from the best." She smiled and opened her arms.

He hesitated.

"Oh, come off it. If I can get over you burning my village and offer you a hug, you can stick your courage down and accept it."

He did.

She squeezed him and rocked him gently from side to side. "I'm sorry this happened. I'm sorry he's such a bastard. Will you help me keep him safe anyway?"

Lancelot laughed shortly. "He doesn't want our help."

"That's why we must try," she replied.

And he knew she was right. "Yes. Yes, I will try."

\--

Before he went to bed, he checked in on Gawain, meaning to reassure himself that he was still breathing and then depart to his own tent. But Gawain was wide awake in the late hour, sitting in his covered cart, wrapped in a blanket. Reading. Or, more like staring at a single page morosely _not_ reading.

"Oh," Lancelot said before he meant to. 

He looked up at the word, hanging between them. "Hello."

"I wanted to make sure you're still breathing," he admitted. "I am having some trouble trusting this magic."

"I as well, but there's no choice in the matter." He slipped a pressed leaf between the pages of the tattered book.

"You can read," Lancelot noted.

"Is it surprising?" He smiled a little.

"Frankly, yes. Literacy is quite rare outside the cities."

He smiled wider. "For humans."

Lancelot smiled back. "For humans."

"If humans were all able to read, they would kill their God," he declared boldly. "And never stand for a king again. I've read your Bible and your histories. Keeping the peasant class illiterate is the only way they can keep a peasant class."

"The Fey have no peasants?"

He shook his head. "We have kings and queens when we need leaders, but for the most part they should mind their own business. A farmer is the only one who can pull grain from the land. A blacksmith shapes iron into tools. A baker makes bread and a hunter too. A king leads warriors to battle against other kings, and... That's it. That's all kings are needed for."

"We're going to see a king that wants nothing to do with our army and seems to live in peace while Fey villages are burning in the south," Lancelot pointed out playfully.

A storm passed over Gawain's face, swift and terrible. He closed the book with a snap and hurled it across the cart. "That man is a traitor to his kind and a tyrant and his wife a wicked sorceress who has congress with the spirits of death. I--" his angry expression collapsed in an instant and he rubbed his hands over his face for a moment, catching his breath. "I'm... Sorry, I have some strong opinions about that family."

Lancelot reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

Gawain leaned into it without thinking. "I've asked them so many times for help. They send back sheets and sheets of parchment wasted with reports of the weather and the politics of court and their personal thoughts on literature and _we're dying_ in the south. They could not care less." He dug his fingertips into the wood of the cart and worried out splinters. 

The angry fidgeting reminded Lancelot of Percival. He closed his hand over Gawain's near hand to stop him, squeezed it comfortingly. "We will figure it all out," he soothed.

Gawain's anger melted, and for a moment he leaned in and his shoulders relaxed. "Lancelot," he asked quietly. "What is this?"

"A reward," he replied, finding even as he said it that he meant it. "For telling me what you think. Sharing what's in your mind."

His eyes flicked up ti meet his gaze, green but untwisting. "I have shared my opinion of the Orkney clan with all who will listen. It's hardly uncommon knowledge."

Lancelot shifted to sit next to him, but not too close. Not exactly touching, but _yet_ was clearly expressed in the minimal distance between them. "So tell me something not everyone knows. Share something with me."

Gawain licked his lips, looking off-balance. He exhaled shortly, and his breath puffed across the gap between them. He considered.

Lancelot was having trouble not fixating on Gawain's mouth, but he knew he was moments from a real prize. A little piece of knowledge that could become a bridge to the next piece, and the next piece, until he could get under all of that armor and find the sky man whose chest he'd reached into. Who had asked him to stay against the nightmares.

Gawain took a short inhale, then, "They're _my_ family. By blood. I am their bastard secret."

Lancelot hummed, pleased. "I am going to kiss you. Do you know why?"

Gawain shook his head dumbly.

"Because you shared something of yourself with me. Every time you do, I will reward you."

The green untwisted a modicum more. His expression wavered on the edge of vulnerability, but his _want_ was clear. 

Lancelot caught his eyes from their wandering. "Do you understand?"

He nodded.

He leaned in and captured Gawain's lips, encompassed them, brushed them in departure. 

He made a quiet noise of disappointment as he pulled away.

"Is there anything more you want to share with me?"

He swallowed thickly, shadows and doubt.

"Let's do this more," Lancelot proposed. "Good night." And then he was walking away, enjoying Gawain's helpless noises behind him.


	14. Courtesy and Respect

It was another week before they stood at the beach of Gill's Bay, two rivers to the west and the sea wind in their faces. The islands were just barely visible ahead of them. The waters were rough. 

"I don't suppose you know where to find a boat?" the Red Spear snarked.

"There's a ferry," Gawain reassured them, but he didn't look very reassured himself.

"We could use the time to pick the stones out of our feet. How big is the ferry?"

He shrugged. "It's for shepherds on their way to market, usually, so big enough for thirty or so people and their belongings. A bit less with horses."

"What's got you so tense, sky man?" she prodded.

He frowned. "We should all talk about how this is going to go."

She squinted at him for a moment, then nodded. "I'll round everyone up."

He crouched on the beach and stared out over the waves, contemplating just walking into them and continuing until they swept him under. Before, he had wanted to die because he was in pain, a useless burden on those he wanted most to protect, and haunted by everything he had seen and done. Now that this new task loomed before him, he wanted to die to avoid it. 

_Lancelot needs to hurry the hell up and kill me already._

Almost as soon as he thought it, the pale and grey wall of an ash man appeared beside him. He looked up, squinting in the winter sun. "I don't suppose you're feeling particularly homicidal in this moment?"

"No. Who needs killing now?"

"Me."

Lancelot regarded him for a moment, then planted a foot against his hip and gave him just enough of a shove to tip him sideways into the sand.

"Asshole," he grunted, standing and dusting off.

The others collected in a few minutes. Gawain checked that everyone was present, then grabbed Percival's hand. "The first thing that will happen when we arrive at the keep is that they will meet us in the field with what is going to seem like a ludicrous complement of men at arms. There will probably be a show of magic to go with this show of force. It's intentional. Do not, under any circumstances, draw a weapon or show that you mean to fight. They may not be able to kill you, but they will do us harm, and they may not take the refugees in if we are aggressive."

They shifted uncomfortably and looked between each other. "The next thing that will happen is that we will be admitted to the keep, the caravan will be allowed to assemble outside the walls, and--" he took a deep breath, "--they will throw me in the dungeon."

Percival squawked, but fell silent when Gawain squeezed his hand.

Nimue objected immediately. "Why would they imprison a supplicant? This is against the laws of hospitality."

"I am generally forbidden from being on the islands due to... Well, due to some outstanding business. I won't stay in the dungeon for very long, maybe a few days, before the queen lets me out or our work here is concluded and then they will throw me out behind you. Do not bargain for my freedom. What are you not to do?"

"Bargain for your freedom," Nimue repeated miserably.

Squirrel made angry faces.

"You'll have to stay a couple of days, just out of courtesy. Courtesy is *extremely important* here. More important than substance or honesty or--"

"You really hate these people," Arthur marvelled.

"If we had any other choice, I would recommend it," he answered bluntly. "These people, no matter how they act towards you, are *not your friends.*" He took a deep breath. "Just be polite. Do your best. Don't wander anywhere on your own. Stick together. When someone tries to make you do something you don't want to do-- and _they will_ \-- excuse yourself on the politest terms. Make up an oath that you have to keep, if you have to. Prior promises will be something they can understand."

Nimue worried her lower lip with her teeth, frowning hard. "I want some of us to stay back here," she decided. "Anyone from the circle who isn't needed for negotiations and who doesn't mean to remain after, should stay on the mainland."

Gawain nodded. "A wise thing." He looked at Percival. 

"No!" He panicked. "No, you can't face them without me! I can help to protect you!" He tried to pull his hand loose.

"Squirrel, the moment they see you're precious to me, your life will be in danger." He grimaced, kneeling down and catching him in a hug. "Please. Be safe for me, so that I can do this."

"Are they in the habit of harming children, in this kingdom?" Lancelot asked stiffly. 

"They'll harm mine," Gawain answered with grave certainty.

Squirrel buried his face in his papa's neck. "I'm not afraid."

"I know you're not." He smiled into his hair. "My brave son isn't afraid. I'm afraid." When it became apparent Squirrel didn't mean to let go, he lifted the boy so he could stand and continue talking to the others. "Nimue and I may be all that is needed, but a silent show of strength would speed things along. Strength, not aggression."

"I've lived the last forty years at court, give or take," Merlin offered. "I can accompany you." He set his hand on Nimue's shoulder.

"I will go, in case you need a bodyguard," Arthur offered.

"Tact isn't my strong point," the Red Spear excused herself. "I will stay on the mainland with the army."

Kaze bore her teeth in agreement.

"Yeah, no, pass," Pym decided.

Gawain looked over at Lancelot, inscrutable to most.

"You're not going anywhere near these people without me," he decided.

Squirrel hiccuped. "You're leaving me here by myself?"

Gawain grimaced. "Someone has to keep Ms Spear and Sir Kaze out of trouble."

He grumbled. "I guess."

"Thank you," he told Percival, but he was looking at Lancelot.

\---

They went together on the ferry. The sound of the waves and the wind drowned out anything they might have said to each other, so instead they focused on not freezing. Once the ferryman deposited them on the the other side, there was no trace of where to go next. No path, no signpost, no beaten trail in the meadow grass.

Merlin frowned. "There's a glamour here. It's not very advanced, I'm sure I can--"

"Don't," Gawain warned. "At least, not yet. Keep your skill under your hat for now. I know the way."

They followed him into the high grasses. As they walked, the grasses seemed to stretch ever higher, first at their waists, then at their shoulders, then over their heads. Gawain led them around sudden sand pits and fens, sinkholes and quiet little ponds. The grasses rarely dipped below shoulder height, so it was a mystery how he could navigate.

Then suddenly, the grasses simply stopped. A green meadow stretched between them and a handsome grey stone keep, with white banners featuring a black raven. Before they could adjust to the change, the landscape changed again; a haar descended from the sky, turning everything to a thick soup. Raven calls surrounded them, and then screams.

"Steady," Gawain warned them. He knelt and placed a hand on the ground, and green crept up his bare-skinned arm, under his broken armor, and then appeared again at his neck. As soon as it reached his face, he exhaled, and it seemed the sound of his breath pushed the haar away from them. When he again stood, a voice greeted them from the watchtower above the gate, amplified magically such that he didn't seem to be shouting at all, and every bit of the speaker's emotion was clear in his words.

" _Oh._ It's _you._ "

Gawain grinned joylessly. "Hello, Agravaine. They've still got you on guard duty?"

"You know you're under arrest, right? Idiot."

"I am escort of the Fey Queen, Lady of the Lake, the Wolf-Blood Witch, Nimue. She has business with King Lot."

"That's fine. You're still under arrest. Come in."

A copper-haired young man with suspiciously broad cheekbones met them in the courtyard, flanked by four guards in black and white tabards. "I suppose you're her?" he greeted Nimue.

Gawain slapped him, first on one cheek, then the other. "Your manners are a shame to this place."

Agravaine managed to look bored even as he shot Gawain a hateful look. He bowed to Nimue begrudgingly. "Your grace."

Nimue gave him the barest of nods. "We would speak with the King."

 _"My father_ isn't here. He's gone out hunting. I'd be happy to accommodate you and your party in the great hall, where you will receive food and drink."

She nodded properly this time. "Our thanks."

"This one is going to the dungeon though."

"Is that really necessary?" She inquired, trying not to seem too interested.

"Oh, but it is." Agravaine seized Gawain's arm gleefully and tried to shove him towards the waiting guards.

Gawain smirked and simply bent his knees, lowering his center of gravity and allowing Agravaine's aggression to roll past him like it was nothing.

He growled and snapped at a guard, who dutifully bashed the butt of his spear against the back of Gawain's head, then swept it under his legs at the knee. 

Gawain grunted and went down hard on the stone pavement, but grabbed the spear and wrenched it out of the guard's hands. He pointed it up at Agravaine right as the other three spears were leveled at his neck.

Agravaine grinned. "It's been a long time."

He grinned back. "Not long enough." He offered the handle of the spear to the guard he'd disarmed, and then brought his arms to shield his face and neck.

The guards commenced kicked and beating him with spear butts.

Lancelot lurched forward, but Merlin stopped him with a hand across his chest and a warning look. He couldn't help a sound of frustration first.

Agravaine raised an eyebrow. "An ash fey. Interesting. What is this trash to you?" He indicated Gawain with a gesture of his foot.

"That's my knight you're savaging," Nimue declared imperiously. "Rather true what he said about your manners."

Agravaine looked at her sharply, drew his lips into a thin line, then gestured at the guards, who stopped the beating. "He's had enough, apparently. Lock him away."

Two of the guards hauled him to his feet and began pulling him away.

He stumbled a little, and his breathing was labored, but he managed to look over his shoulder at them and give them a look of warning. He locked eyes with Lancelot for the briefest moment before they were out of sight.

Lancelot's stomach turned sour and he had difficulty controlling his composure.

Nimue squeezed his arm, getting his attention. "We guess this one will have to do, then." 

"You are well-accompanied, he seems formidable indeed," Agravaine praised. "And obedient."

He tasted bile in the back of his throat, but remembered Gawain's warning look, and forced what he hoped was a polite smile.

"Fierce!" Agravaine added. "Follow me if you would, Your Grace."

They drew close on either side of Nimue, and followed him deeper into the keep.


	15. Yours/Mine/Ours

King Lot was certainly something. He was brown as a nut, hair and skin, but had a certain weirdly familiar bearing. Well-muscled and tall, he cut a handsome figure in his black and white court clothes. After the flurry of activity following the return of the hunting party, he greeted them in the great hall, where warm fires burned in five hearths and high stained-glass windows windows let in enough light to illuminate the table, itself richly laid.

Servants came out of darkened corners to pull his chair and pour his drink. But before he was seated, he bowed properly over Nimue's hand and kissed her knuckles. 

"Your Highness," Lot greeted her, friendly and smiling. "A pleasure to finally have another monarch of our people to visit my humble home."

She smiled and curtsied in turn. "Your Highness. I am pleased to visit, though the occasion be grim."

"Hm, right to the point," he admired. "I am pleased to see Lenore's dedication and courtesy reflected in your fair self. A shame those qualities didn't make an impression on our boy, but you at least are generous enough to tolerate his presence."

Nimue's smile faltered in confusion.

Merlin took over for her. "Your Highness, it has been a long time."

"Indeed it has, and too long," he shook hands with Merlin, accepting his brief bow. "I am pleased to see you beside this young queen, as a show of support I should think, from our mutual friend." He turned to Lancelot and Arthur, and waited expectantly.

Arthur bowed, but did not offer his hand to shake, knowing it wouldn't be accepted. "Arthur, Your Highness. And he is Lancelot. We are steward and tactical advisor, respectively."

"Hm," Lot nodded politely. "I see you had some unpleasantness getting here." He nodded to the state of their clothes. "Please, won't you stay with us for some days, and take your ease, and let my home be as your home."

Nimue smiled gratefully. "Your Grace, we have but three days before we must turn south to join our forces with our allies, who are expecting us on time. And I'm certain my people are keen to get to safety. We should talk of the refugees."

He pursed his lips but his smile didn't fade. "I hope that you will understand that such matters can never be rushed. Wise decisions take some time." He lifted his chin in a hauntingly familiar way, then nodded. "Three days should be enough; if we come to an agreement at all, it will happen in that time."

Her smile faltered. "Ah, forgive me. I had thought the matter settled, and logistics to be the only thing that remained. At least, my knight gave me that impression."

He chuckled. "Yes, I supposed that he would. He is a fair fellow, but false, always promising what isn't his to give. Making trouble where none is needed. I hope your other companions are more steadfast and sensible."

Lancelot tasted fire, but clenched his jaw shut and stilled his hands before they could reach for a blade. Or two blades. Or all the blades he was carrying.

"We need to discuss assurances that your army will leave once your refugees have arrived, the number of refugees I can accept, assurances that your refugees intend to integrate with the local culture and way of life and live by the laws of this place." He counted off issues as if they were obvious to anyone. "Then there's the matter of our mutual friend Uther."

She bit her tongue. 

Merlin was quietly impressed with her composure. "We have agreed that, should His Grace resume the throne, Her Majesty would remain Queen of the Fey of the south and swear fealty to him."

"Imagine, there being two authorities for the Fey in this land," he scoffed. "No, it won't do. It isn't sensible. You can swear your fealty to me, and rule the south in my name, and I will swear _our_ people's loyalty to the Pendragon."

Nimue gave him a hard look. "I cannot break my pact to make another."

He smiled again, eerily familiar. "Of course not. Well. We indeed have much to discuss. I hope that you will first rest. My ferryman will see that your refugees are brought across and can make camp outside the walls of the keep, and that bread and salt are distributed, and access to the river and wells guaranteed. Join me for supper, and we will talk about anything but business." He stood and swept an arm to the side.

A line of servants and maids filed out from a darkened corridor and bowed or curtsied, then gestured for them to follow.

Merlin hung back for a moment.

"She is quite a queen. Your daughter?"

Merlin nodded. 

"Uther has done right by you, and by your people, letting her unite them and organize them. Modernize them."

Merlin nodded again.

"You're a wise one. Be wise in your counsel to her." King Lot turned to go.

Merlin bowed, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

\--

They were brought each to chambers where a hot bath was carried up and soaps prepared, rich clothes laid out for them. Maids helped Nimue to comb and braid her hair. Servants took their own clothes to be mended, their armor and shoes to be repaired. They rested in feather beds and silk sheets. 

Except Lancelot, who paced like a caged beast on the balcony adjoining his and Arthur's rooms. When he went past the window again, Arthur called out to him.

"Stop pacing, you'll wear the stone down."

Lancelot whirled on him, with no other outlet for his anxiety. "This is absurd. They beat him and hauled him away and called him names. Insulted his character, him, who gave everything for his people."

Arthur nodded empathetically. "I understand your anger. It isn't fair. But he told us this was going to happen before we came here, and told us not to interfere."

"No, he said don't be aggressive and don't bargain for his freedom. By _fuck,_ what if he will die here, and he knew as much, and is just sacrificing himself like some big, dumb..."

Arthur raised an eyebrow, academically interested in how he was going to finish that.

"Some big, dumb knight," he ended miserably.

The man tipped his head to the side, considering. "That doesn't seem like his style. He doesn't _want_ to sacrifice himself, he would just do it if he had to. You know, like..." He trailed off, eyes sliding over to gauge Lancelot's level of composure.

"The mill?" He suggested. "When he was going to come out and let me kill him, even though he knew I would not have freed his friend?"

Arthur leaned against the door frame. "Maybe you're right. He is a big, dumb knight. But he seems to know these people, so let's take his word for it. He can sit in a jail for a couple of days-- I have before, it's not the worst thing-- and when we go, if they don't set him free, then we'll stage a daring rescue then. But for now, let's not mess anything up?"

Lancelot scowled, but nodded. "For now. But if there's a chance we can help him--"

"We won't, because he told us not to." He raised an eyebrow pointedly. "Have some faith. Er... You know what I mean."

He huffed and went back to pacing.

\--

Gawain felt along the stone wall intently for the loose stone he remembered from years before. His hands throbbed fiercely where he had caught booted heels, and the rest of him complained in reply. He distracted himself with the search, knowing that anyone could have been kept here in the intervening years between when he had hidden it and now. It would be silly to hope--

A stone shifted under his hand. He grinned, painful past a split and swollen lip held together by a thin green tendril. He slid the stone out if its place and reached into the hole and extracted a stone amphora with a wooden stopper. He ran his hands over the surface, pushing dust away. How many years ago had he secreted this away? Twelve? Fifteen? 

As a young man eager for adventure, he had boarded a ship for the so-called Holy Lands. He had learned to fight, read, write, harp, figure accounts, navigate by the stars, joust, break sieges, orate, even sing. All the things a prince should know how to do. He'd even fought a giant for three days in a row, and bested him in the end. 

He'd thought he would return home and be welcomed at last for his accomplishments. But what he had also learned there had made him twice the pariah he'd been when he left. Power corrupts, he had learned. And there was no god that granted the right to rule over others. No naturally noble or ignoble people, no right of birth, only the quality of their actions and the worth of their character. And he had returned to sunder the kingdom, so that all would be free.

And his family had let him know exactly what they thought about that. He'd wound up in the same cell so many times that he'd stashed some supplies here to make it easier. The food would be long since rotted away, but the whisky--

Uncorked, the contents of the amphora filled the stone cell with the scent of fire and peat, strength and pure sunlight breaking through clouds. Cellars and cells weren't so different, when one really got down to it.

He slid to the ground with his back to the wall and took a long drink, enjoying how the whisky warmed him. The magic bindings in his chest were rolling almost angrily, trying to find a new equilibrium after being so rudely disturbed. It was unsettling and he wished he had packed along a bottle of whatever tincture Polly made for killing pain.

He rested his head back against the stone and allowed himself a little self-indulgent groan. The wounds would heal. Bruises would fade. And what was a little humiliation against the safety of two thousand people?

He took another pull from the bottle and tried not to think about the look in Lancelot's eyes when they hauled him away. "Please," he whispered into the darkness. "Don't do anything stupid."


	16. Visitations on a theme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "most of the things were just so horrible, twisted and violent if you actually think about them" - kay
> 
> This chapter dedicated to Angst Monk

Gawain was fairly certain that it was the middle of the second night. His body was cramping from inaction, sore from lying on the cold stone, and though the vines had grown over his new wounds as soon as he received them, the healing had stopped. 

He had to remove his ruined armor, as his wrenched shoulder and bruised chest were swelling and needed the room. Then he removed his shirt, since it was mostly sweat and dried blood at this point. This left nothing between him and the cold air of the cell, which felt perversely soothing against his wounds. At least his ribs weren't trying to rearrange themselves anymore; the bindings inside had settled and now only gave a little flutter now and then, which sent him coughing. It was all nothing against his disgust at his family's taunts.

Every night at sundown, and every morning, a servant brought a small cup of water, and a tiny portion of too-rich food. The first night, it had been a cabbage leaf with a tail of river-crab, rolled in some kind of cream sauce. The next morning, a sweet bread the size of his thumb, filled with jam. This evening, a coin-sized quiche with a slice of mushroom right in the middle. The message was clear. _You could have had this. This is what you could have had._

Well, no matter. He craved trail bread and burnt rabbit, and he had endured torture before. This was nothing.

A shadow shifted outside his cell. His mind immediately whispered _Lancelot_ , but he shushed it. The last three clouds over the moon had been Lancelot, too, and the candle-flickers from the servant that brought the too-rich food that he definitely wasn't thinking about.

He swallowed down the empty hope and watched the flickers of a candle approaching from the end of the corridor. 

A young man of perhaps fourteen was slouching his way through the near-perfecly dark dungeon corridor with a familiarity no one should have with dungeon corridors. He had something slung across his shoulder and hanging at his side-- a messenger's bag?-- and a candle in one hand. He gave a start when he got to Gawain's cell, presumably at the sight of the sky man half sitting, hang leaning against the grated door.

"Hello," Gawain said as gently as he could, given the effect that downing an entire bottle of well-aged whisky had on one's voice. "Don't be afraid."

The youngster hesitated anyway, holding up the candle to have a look at him.

The knight figured he must have been quite the spectacle, covered in vines and dried blood. He made no sudden movement, so as not to spook the boy.

"I... I know who you are," he declared uncertainly, putting his voice between them like a sword.

Gawain smiled, feeling it pull on his lip and at his brow. "Then you have me at a disadvantage." He cleared his throat. "Who are you?"

The boy hesitated again, then crouched on the floor to be on the same eye-level. "I am called Gareth. I think... I think we are brothers."

"Your mother is a witch and your father is an empty walnut husk with delusions of godhood?"

"If you mean Lot and Anna--"

"--I do--"

"--then yes."

Gawain smiled at him. "Hold that candle higher, let me have a look at my brother."

He obeyed, revealing an open, kind face with perfect hazel eyes, dark copper hair, and fair skin.

"Hm, yes, we are definitely related."

"You are the eldest," Gareth said carefully. "You are the heir."

He shook his head gently. "Agravaine is the eldest legitimate child. I was born much before our parents were wed, so I am not eligible for the fucked up gallery of royals." He tipped his head to the side and cleared his throat again. "I suppose I'm at least the talk of the hall at supper time, though?"

Gareth smiled a little at that.

"Oh good. I do like making an impression. What brings you down here for a visit? Curiosity or murder? I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you on both counts: I'm not very interesting and at the moment my death is promised to someone else."

Gareth's smile turned shy. "Actually, Sir Lancelot sent me."

Gawain's head jerked up in surprise, mainly at how the name twisted his heart.

Gareth didn't notice his reaction, having already set the candle on the ground between them. "Sir Lancelot found me after supper because Queen Nimue noticed that my parents had forebade me food that evening. I have done quite poorly in my lessons at magic and mother hoped I would conjure my own bread and meat or something. Anyway, she must have mentioned this to Sir Lancelot, who didn't come to supper at all tonight and had requested food be sent to his room."

Gawain watched intently as Gareth opened and unpacked the contents of the messenger bag, laying out a loaf of bread, a cloth-wrapped piece of meat, some cheese, an apple the size of a man's fist-- all with tiny bites out of them.

"He invited me to have supper with him, and asked me all kinds of questions, and when I told him about what _this_ place is like, he wrapped up all of this and sent me to give it you."

He eagerly accepted the offerings, though he had to bread the bread in half to fit it through the grate. 

"He took a bite out of every piece," Gareth pointed out needlessly, babbling now from nervousness. "To check for poison. Though why anyone would poison him is a mystery. Father knighted him in front of the entire court, so that probably--"

"He _what._ " Gawain closed his hand involuntary around the bread, crushing it flat. _That bastard._

The youngster stopped talking and shrank in in himself, waiting for the anger to resolve itself physically upon his person.

Gawain's heart thumped in his chest. "Oh, little brother. You have nothing to fear from me." He reached a hand through the grate and, when it was gingerly taken, squeezed it gently. "I will never harm you out of anger. Know that."

Gareth looked at their hands and then at Gawain with a longing that spoke silently of a loveless childhood.

Gawain felt his heart making decisions without the counsel of his head. Again. He sighed. "My friends leave tomorrow. Disguise yourself and get on the ferry with them."

"Mother will never let me go," he replied. "She is desperate for someone with magical aptitude in the family, and Agravaine and Gaheris are dull as river stones. She wants you to stay. I guess that's why she has these geasa on your cell."

His ears perked up. "What is their nature?"

Gareth squinted at some place over the door, as if reading in the total darkness. "No magic can be worked inside the cell. No messages can be passed by paper or magical means. No fire. No other heat."

"That explains why it's cold as a witch's tit in here," he grumbled.

"I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not skilled. I can read, sure, and I can see the nature of magic clear as day. That blessing you have on you, for example, it's frozen in its path."

"Will it unfreeze when I leave the cell?"

"Sure," Gareth answered easily. "Look at your hand."

The swelling had diminished on the back of the hand that he'd put out the grate. "Well. That boundary is rather literal, isn't it."

"Mother is very specific," he agreed.

He squeezed Gareth's hand again to get his attention. "You should come with us. Let me take care of her."

He hesitated. "Can you--?"

He grinned crookedly and gave him a wink. "With a blessing like this, and the Fey Queen beside me? I might just be her equal. And you have seen the rest of my companions. We will keep you safe."

A little flame of hope lit up his expression. "I will try."

"Pack for the road, little brother."

\--

Lancelot was pacing-- his current favorite pastime-- when Gareth slipped back into his room. He ground to a halt, all his focus on the boy.

The boy, of course, faced with two meters of dark-cloaked ash-streaked pissed-off knight, froze and tried his best not to wet his pants.

Lancelot sighed tolerantly and knelt down, softening his affect. "How is he?"

"In good spirits," Gareth reported shakily. "He was happy for the food, and sends thanks. He says, 'You're doing fine so far. Don't do anything stupid.'"

He smiled for the relief in his heart. "And physically?"

Gareth shifted his weight from side to side uncomfortably. "He looks scary."

Behind Lancelot, on the balcony, Arthur barked a laugh.

"He's got these vines all over him, and bruises, and he said it was very cold."

Lancelot's heart twisted in his chest. _Don't do anything stupid._ "The vines are good," he explained. "They are the blessing of the Hidden."

"I know, but the geasa on his cell won't let any magic work."

 _Don't do anything stupid._ "And the cell? Is he comfortable? Able to move around?"

"It's a cell, Sir, it's not designed to be comfortable."

Arthur laughed again. "I like this kid."

Lancelot stood up again, hands clenching and unclenching. _I'm going to do something stupid._ "Take me there."

"Lancelot, _no._ " The man stepped into the room now, and daringly put himself in front of the door. "He said not to do this."

"He's cold, injured, and alone. He needs us."

"He needs us to stay put and let the negotiations happen," Arthur reasoned.

"I won't leave him to suffer and die again!" Lancelot roared at him. "Get out of my way or I will move you out if the way."

It was Arthur's turn to try not to wet his pants, but to his credit, his fortitude endured. "If you save him and it ruins the chance of two thousand souls having a peaceful life, what do you think that will do to him, in the end?"

Lancelot _shook_ with rage. He clenched his jaw shut, reached for his sword.

"Sir, peace," Gareth begged. "Do not draw on your friend in anger. I will not take you where you wish to go." He stood in front of Arthur, and put his hands up appeasingly between them. "Peace."

Lancelot gazed at the boy in open surprise. His every aspect, from look to posture, reminded of a young Gawain. He released the handle of his sword and stood back, watching him with anguish.

Gareth relaxed marginally, but stayed between Arthur and Lancelot.

"Oh sweet boy," he said miserably. "You cannot stay here."

He nodded. "My brother has advised me to join you. I will see you again on the mainland, but you have to get there without incident. If there is any trouble, you will be so closely watched that it will be impossible for me to follow." He paused. "And you perhaps know, but if you make trouble in this keep, they will kill him in front of you and send you away with his head."

Lancelot shuddered, all too able to imagine the weight of his head in his hands. There was a rushing sound in his ears.

Arthur's voice cut through it. "Hey, buddy? Friend? Why don't you sit down." 

There were hands on his elbows, guiding him to a chair. Taking his sword belt. Guiding his head between his knees. He shook.

"There you go," the man's voice continued. "Breathe. It's going to be alright."

"What's wrong with him?" Gareth sounded confused.

"Fetch a bucket," Arthur ordered him.

Moments later, the bucket appeared in Lancelot's field of vision. He grabbed it and voided his supper. 

"There, it's over," a hand patted his back, took the bucket, gave him a cloth to wipe his mouth. "There, now."

"What is this place?" Lancelot sobbed. "Why does it smell like the abbey?"

"Oh no," Arthur's voice turned horrified. He turned away a moment to order Gareth, "Fetch Nimue."

He hugged his legs and didn't dare sit up. "Father is angry. It's all my fault. They're killing the children."

"You're not there," a half-soothing, half-panicking voice told him. "Shh, you're far away from that."

"I am and am not," he mourned. "It's everywhere. This whole cursed isle from the chalk cliffs to these islands. It's the whole world like this." Lancelot drew in a great, shuddering breath, and finally wept.


	17. The Ballad of the Empty Grave

They said their goodbyes to their friends who would stay, and it took all morning. Nimue made a speech that ended in tears. Then they loaded onto the ferry by themselves, and set off for the mainland.

Lancelot was a bundle of nerves. There was enough room to pace on the ferry, but now he stood rooted to a single place, pale, heart pounding in his ears. He felt echoing, vast, empty.

They'd done it. They saved two thousand souls. An army awaited on the other shore, ready to take the pain to the church and the king and the raiders. Ready to make safe the isle.

But no one on the ferry was celebrating.

When the raft bumped onto the pier, Lancelot leapt to the boards and pulled the ropes fast, looped them hastily around the post. "Where is he?" He asked, voise edged with panic. "Your king promised. Where is he?"

The ferryman helped them out of the raft, then pointed farther down the beach, towards the dunes. A dark shape lay on the sand. The ferryman unlooped the ropes quickly and pushed off, eager to be free of the armed and twitchy passengers.

 _No, no no no no_ he sprinted towards the still form. His feet shifted in the sand. It seemed like the longest sprint he had ever made.

And he could hear him. He could hear his voice, over the noise of the waves and sea winds, eerie but familiar, like the brush of a ghost across his mind. The voice was ___singing.___

___I passed in the darkest hour of the night  
And there are none who now can say  
If my blood was shed or bravely bled  
Or where my body lay.  
In ocean's toss, my folly lost,  
And turned my soul to stone.  
In the fen's deep moss or winter's frost,  
I leave no rotting bones._ _ _

The form was still. Too still--

___Over me, the sky has been,  
And the moonlight, snow, and rain;  
But there are none who weep, or vigil keep,  
At the stone of my empty grave._ _ _

Lancelot skidded to a stop and collapsed next to him, gathering him in his arms and searching so desperately for signs of life that he missed the gentle smile, the open eyes. "No no no no--"

Gawain wrapped a hand in his cloak, pulling as close as he could. And he really was singing, though there was no reason Lancelot should have been able to hear him before.

___No warm embrace with sorrow's grace,__  
My memory for to save.  
No shoulders bend, my wounds to mend,  
Or bear witness to my pain._

"Shut up," he ordered, voice breaking. "Tell me what you need."

"You," he muttered, burying his face in Lancelot's shoulder. "I need you."

Lancelot pressed his face against his. "Yes. I am here. You have me."

Gawain shivered, numb.

Nimue approached more carefully. "Is he-?"

"Alive," Lancelot responded instantly. "But he's so cold."

She wrapped her fur cloak around him, helped Lancelot bundle him tighter. "Get a fire going," she called over them to Arthur and Merlin, who were close behind. "Is he conscious?"

"Yes," Gawain croaked.

"Oh thank Manannán." She drew close on his other side, lending her own warmth.

"Oh," he gasped-- the whole word.

As soon as the fire was started, Lancelot carried him to its side, and placed himself to block the wind. He drew him tighter as he shook.

It was a long while before he was warm enough that the shivers subsided. He relaxed enough to tilt his head back and study Lancelot's tear-streaked profile.

Lancelot studied him back, unashamed to do so with a small audience. "You're an idiot."

"Hm," he agreed. "Is... Is today the day?" he asked, voice slurring.

"No," he forebade.

"Hm," he said, resting his head against Lancelot's arm. "So tired."

Lancelot brushed his free hand over Gawain's brow, and some of the vines spidering over the bruises and cuts flaked off to reveal unmarred skin. He continued brushing, removing vines from his lip, chin, neck. He frowned and prodded at Gawain's shoulder, causing him to twitch and complain softly. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to that shoulder, earning a tired sigh.

With the adrenaline gone and Gawain safely in his arms, he felt suddenly tired himself. He almost nodded off, and definitely didn't notice the ferryboat coming and going farther down the beach, but the shift of sand gave away a newcomer.

Gareth slouched over to their campfire and folded himself into a neat pile of limbs next to Lancelot. He looked between him and Gawain, then smirked. "Knew it."

"Shut up," Gawain advised him, a muffled voice in a pile of cloth.

A long time later, alerted by the campfire smoke, Kaze appeared with horses to take them back to where the army had dug in. She watched with a raised eyebrow as he helped a sleep-clumsy Gawain onto the horse first, then climbed up behind to hold him in place. "What the hell happened?"

"Family reunion," Gawain mumbled darkly.

Arthur's gaze snapped over to him, wide-eyed and aghast.

"I got arrested," he said louder, maintaining his reputation.

Kaze arched an eyebrow at him. "If you keep getting destroyed like this, how are you planning to run a siege? And who is this?"

"Sir Kaze, meet Gareth. My brother."

"Stars help us, there are two of them."

"Four of us, ma'am, but the other two are right bastards," Gareth replied.

Gawain chuckled.

Once the horses had gotten started, Lancelot hung back a little and pressed his face into the blankets near Gawain's neck. "Are we adopting more children?"

Gawain shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold in his bones. "Maybe," he answered breathlessly. "Maybe as many as you want."

"I can feel you putting yourself back together," he whispered so that he was sure he could not be overheard. "All those broken shards wrapped around so much emptiness. Don't _ _ _."___

Gawain suppressed a groan. "They need me," he whispered back. "We're going to war."

"Not tonight," he promised, and captured the shell of his ear gently in his teeth.

He shuddered and his breath caught. "Lancelot, I'm so tired and cold. I can't be good to you this way."

Lancelot pulled him back against him, shifted him backwards in the saddle, ground his hips covertly forward. "I know. But this time, I'm going to put you back together the right way."

Gawain barely caught the needy sound before it escaped him. He grasped Lancelot's forearms for balance.

Lancelot turned the horse sharply as they approached the camp.

Gareth turned back to say something.

"No," a chorus of voices ordered.

He blinked, confounded, but followed the party farther into the camp.


	18. The blood-letting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex in this chapter

Lancelot slid out of saddle first, and guided Gawain down after him. 

Gawain tried to walk under his own power, but the world tilted and he stumbled, caught hold of Lancelot--

\--who stood like a statue, utterly unimpressed. "Are you done?"

"Done?" his brow wrinkled, and he felt his knees wobble. "I..."

Lancelot slipped arms under his shoulders and knees in the moment before he collapsed, and lifted him without protest.

"How?" Gawain marveled distantly. "You're so lean."

"I have bad news about the last months and your own self," he chided him, and carried him into his tent. Nothing had been disturbed since they had left for the islands. And he had chosen his own tent for a reason, knowing that Squirrel was probably sleeping in Gawain's bed. 

He very gently, and very lithely, laid Gawain in his bed and spread every blanket and fur in the tent over him. He sat on the bedside for a moment and admired him. "This is what it took to make you vulnerable."

"Hn?" he wondered intelligently, hovering in the confusing space between sleepy and aroused. He coughed quietly.

"I thought you had to trust me, but it turns out all I needed to do was kill you, let you come back from the dead, and then let the world have a go at you next."

Gawain tried to laugh, but it turned into a rattling cough. "Is it so difficult to believe?"

"A lot of it is pretty unbelievable," Lancelot allowed. "We live in interesting times." He stared directly into Gawain's hooded, grass-green eyes, examining the slow twist of unnatural shades there. "Even now." He placed a hand on Gawain's neck gently, with his thumb across his throat, and watched in fascination as the twisting shadows quickened in time with Gawain's pulse. "You still want me to kill you."

Gawain breathed and stared back, too weak to disguise his soul. Was today the day? Would the Weeping Monk keep his promise? He could almost feel the peace, the deep silence of twilight. Oh, he wanted it.

The corners of Lancelot's eyes fell. He frowned without frowning, a portrait of disappointment. 

Gawain _panicked._ Well and truly panicked. He wrapped both hands around Lancelot's arm before he could pull away. "Don't go," the words fell out of his mouth, hurried and tripping over each other. "Keep your promise."

His eyes widened. "You're... You're a madman. Know that."

"I need you," he begged. And Lancelot could see that was true. His every aspect reflected need of some kind of another. Water, air, warmth, sustenance, care, reassurance, sex, protection.

Death.

Lancelot scoffed. "Well, green knight, you're in luck. I'm mad, too." He leaned in, holding Gawain's neck firmly in place as a promise, and kissed him hard. Mercifully, he let up quickly to allow Gawain to get air. "First we will get your strength up. Then I'm going to take you apart."

Gawain shuddered, but a smile passed over him.

"Rest. I will find you some hot food." He covered him with his own cloak, tucking the hood around his neck-- a promise? A threat? Care? Then he left him alone.

Gawain floated. He didn't know if he slept or not. His limbs were very heavy and his stomach scraped insistently against his spine, lured there by the mention of food. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been hungry. Maybe before he died. He wanted to push himself up, get himself together, but the memory of the monk's hand on his throat, caring so much, dragged him back down. On the islands, when they were most in danger, Lancelot had done everything exactly right, though it must have stung to be held back so. He could be the one to obey now. He could wait.

He grimaced. There was so much to be done. Incredibly, he could still hear obligations buzzing low in the back of his mind. Why wouldn't they just let him die?

Lancelot returned a moment or a era later with an armful of clothes and a hot bowl of stew.

Gawain's attention fixed on the bowl involuntary.

He smirked and set the bundle of clothes down, and the bowl near them. "At least your stomach can get through to you." He extracted something from the pile of clothes. Something long, grey, dull, and about the length of a man's hand. "I found something interesting in your tent while I was fetching your other set of clothes. Don't worry, I didn't let Percival or Gareth see it." He pointed it at him like a dagger, smirking a wicked smirk. "What's your explanation for this?"

Gawain licked his lips, impatient for the stew, but hauled his eyes away and then grimaced. "I decided when I was younger that no one should ever go away from my bed disappointed. As time went on, my body... stopped cooperating all the time. If I was tired or sad or... If I couldn't stop thinking..." He shrugged the un-wrenched shoulder and looked back towards the food. 

Lancelot looked somehow disappointed and pleased at the same time. "So no one has ever used this on you? Not even yourself?"

He frowned, annoyed. "Lancelot, please, what's the game? I'm hungry and that stew is getting cold."

He smirked. "I'm going to give it to you. But first, this is going inside you, and it's going to stay there while I take care of you."

Gawain's mouth went dry and his stomach flipped. "What?"

The Weeping Monk slid forward on silent feet, crouching next to the bed and working his hands under the blankets.

No, Gawain reminded himself tensely. Not the Weeping Monk. Lancelot. 

"Yes?" He asked, gripping his thigh firmly but clearly asking permission.

He steeled his nerves and lifted his leg, shivering as the cold air of the winter night reached under the blankets too. 

"You have to say out loud if you want this or not. And you have to mean it. I couldn't stand to repeat what happened before."

Yes, this was definitely Lancelot. He could do this for Lancelot. He inhaled as deeply as he could and managed, "Yes. Yes I want it."

Lancelot leaned in and gave him a gentle kiss. "Relax." 

And he tried his best, he really did. But even though Lancelot coated it in body-warm oil, even though he prepared him with his hands first, even though he went slow, so sweetly slow, it was a _lot._ He shuddered and twitched, holding on to the bed and choking on his reactions until it stopped halfway.

Lancelot laid a hand on his chest, frowning. "We're far from anyone else. No one can hear you. Open up."

Gawain let out a very vocal gasp and groan.

"Are you in pain?"

"Yes," he gasped, "But not from this. It's just... I'm so empty and this is so much."

Lancelot gave him a reassuring kiss and paused to let him adjust. "We're almost there. Try to relax."

"But you--"

"If you worry about me in this moment I am going to kill myself," he threatened, "just so it will be the last time you ask me that stupid fucking question."

Gawain thumped his head back against the bed and huffed a laugh, but that was moment Lancelot would remember forever: when tears finally started to fall. 

He eased the carved stone farther inside, then held in place for a moment, enjoying the reaction it was getting. Pleased, he folded the blankets back over him and sat next to him on the bed. "Breathe," he advised.

"I feel it," he huffed.

"I should hope so," he smirked. "How does it make you feel?"

He took a few more breaths. "Heavy. Grounded. ...Safe."

Lancelot leaned over and gave him a long, rewarding kiss. "Get comfortable. It's going to stay there as long as you can physically stand it."

He hissed through his teeth, but didn't protest.

Lancelot took the stew bowl from the table at last and watched his attention slowly shift. "Can you hold it yourself, or...?"

Gawain trembled. "You had better hold the bowl. I can manage the spoon."

And he did his best, propped up against the headboard and with so many significant distractions. After the second bite, his hunger took over, and he was able to finish the bowl.

Lancelot took it from him and ran his fingers through his hair, smiling gently. "Good?"

"Hm," Gawain agreed.

"As good as home?"

He grimaced and coughed. "Can we please not talk about home while there's a dildo in my ass?"

Lancelot laughed. "A fair request. But we are going to talk." He set the bowl aside and pulled the blankets down to reveal his chest. He rested his hand over the destroyed side, fingers brushing the vines absently. "How did this?"

Gawain made an inpatient noise. "It pulls when I move. It stabs when I cough. It aches in the cold. But I think they're trying to help."

He brushed his palm over them, and as before, the vines loosened at the contact, searching for him. "Hm."

He grimaced. "It moves inside of me."

"The vines, or the dildo?" He asked flippantly.

Gawain laughed, then coughed, then tensed, trying to hold on. "Ugh."

Lancelot let the Hidden's blessing into his mind willingly this time. The lack that they had found before was still there, but not as achingly new, not urgent. And not as hollow. "I'm going to try," he decided.

"But they're helping."

"These ones are not healing you. They're just holding on to the wound." He leaned down once again, but this time he pressed his lips to the bruised skin. _Heal him. Let him go. I will catch him._

Gawain choked as Lancelot pulled gently on the largest of the vines, and the others came loose. And then, startlingly, the vine inside his chest started to unravel, and he kept pulling as it did. He felt something familiar leaving him, and with that sensation came a strange sense of loss, but the relief that flooded in behind it was so intense that his vision blurred and gravity stopped working. 

Lancelot dumped the vines-- some disturbingly thick-- on the ground next to the bed, spat a mouthful of bitter hate and blackened saliva into them, and carefully checked the aftermath. His ribs seemed to be whole and in the right places, his chest was expanding and contracting with his breath, and the skin was closed and perfect. 

Gawain was floating again. Shock? Maybe. It seemed difficult to think, like trying to hear something very far away. His own thoughts. He looked up at Lancelot with an exhausted, watery expression. "How did you know what to do?"

"I don't, until I'm doing it," he admitted. "When I touch them, they tell me."

He exhaled, gazing in admiration at Lancelot. Then inhaled deeply. Exhaled. He smiled.

Lancelot hoped the heat in his cheeks wasn't visible, but the inherent praise in that look was warming him more than he would have liked. He felt useful. Powerful. This helpless creature was in his hands. He could do anything. He gave him more touches. They both liked that at least. "Can you at least begin to trust that I'm not going to kill you tonight?" He asked, drawing the backs of his fingernails along the now-perfect ribs.

Gawain shivered, expression haunted.

"I want you to need me for other things, besides killing you. You seem to need someone to save you, and I owe you that much at least." He ran his fingertips along his cheekbones. "Tonight, at least, I am not your killer."

Amidst the disappointment that shadowed Gawain's face, there was also something new. Hope? 

"Take a leap," Lancelot advised him. "For all that you want to trust me to take care of, let me start by taking care of you. Even when you're not dying."

Gawain's eyes dulled. Warmed. More golden than green. He exhaled and reached out a hand from under the blankets, this time clutching his hand almost shyly. The timid and uncertain expression was incongruous on his bold features. "Tonight and... Maybe tomorrow. I might need a little more."

Lancelot smiled and gave him another deep kiss as a reward. "That's right," he whispered encouragingly. "Whatever you need. However long you need. I am strong enough to go forever with you."

Gawain shivered again, reaching out more strongly and holding on to him. "I'm so tired and empty. But with you, there's something--" he keened as Lancelot shifted his weight to lay half on top of him, pinning him to the bed. He felt the stone inside if him shift, an intense pressure. He scratched at Lancelot's sides, frantically trying somehow to draw the ash man _physically_ into his heart.

"That's it," Lancelot encouraged gently. "There it is. There it all is." He leaned down and growled into his ear. "Give it to me. Give all of it to me now."

And suddenly Gawain was shaking like a leaf in a storm, sobbing like a child, coming like a teenager, and heaving something out of his chest that poured through his mouth, a river of words and grief that felt like his heart's blood. Even as he was pushing the grief out if his body, he panicked-- what could possibly hold him up, now that it was gone?

"I've been so many places and met so many people who are gone. Made them promises and tried for them. I remember every place like it was yesterday. Every voice like they're just in the other room or right around the corner. I smell things sometimes that I haven't experienced in years. Meaningless words spoken by people who will never speak again. I remember the tavern at the end of the wall in Jerusalem and the smell of the markets in Rome and the sound of the reflecting pool in the courtyard where my first lover lived, in Alexandria. Obligations I have yet to fulfill to people who aren't around to see them done. I have-- I have a letter from a man I should have saved, to his wife, but I never got the courage to deliver it. Hundreds of places. Thousands of souls." He choked.

Lancelot bit down on his shoulder, hard, and worked his arm under the blankets until he could feel the bottom of the stone phallus. He pushed it firmly up, up, tearing down the walls he'd built over decades.

"I left my family," he sobbed, arching into it. "I left my true family and went to the other side of the world to please people who sent me away like trash. I didn't want to be this. I never wanted to be this. But it's what the world needs. I've lived too many lives." He choked again.

"Who are you?" Lancelot asked, moving his knee to hold the stone phallus in place while he grabbed the twitching cock above it. He stroked it gently, knowing it would be extremely sensitive, wanting to keep his lover overwhelmed. Vulnerable. Bleeding. 

Gawain made a confused noise.

"Who are you, without all of the obligations and the ghosts?" He squeezed his cock mercilessly.

Gawain's hands flew up to his shoulders, holding on. He was floating, spinning wildly. There was no gravity anymore, and no sky or ground. No directions, no sound but the pounding of his blood in his ears and the throbbing of his bursting heart and his quivering ass. "I'm Gawain. Just Gawain." He hid his face in Lancelot's shoulder, willing the sensations to stop. "Your Gawain."

Lancelot released him, content with this answer. He drew the slick stone phallus out slowly, enjoying how Gawain shuddered against him and jerked, and the sounds he made. He murmured soothing, wordless sounds in his ear, tossing the thing aside with a mind-bending heavy clunk.

Gawain continued to cling to him, though he was beyond exhausted. When Lancelot moved to rise, he begged him to stay. "Please, just... Just until I'm whole again. Until it's not so cold."

Lancelot smiled, this time softly and fondly. He toed off his boots and slipped under the blankets, leaning his whole weight onto Gawain again, anchoring him. He rained soft kisses down on him. "You did so well," he praised. "You're so beautiful and strong. What a perfect confession. A perfect blood-letting." He rested their foreheads against each other. "I'm proud of you. My Gawain."

"Hm-mm," he wondered, perfectly wrecked. "You..." He trailed off, tossing his head to the side and frowning, trying to remember what words were.

Lancelot waited patiently, admiring how Gawain's eyes were finally the color he remembered. He smiled.

Gawain fell asleep before he remembered how to speak.


End file.
